


A Mile in Her Shoes

by nyltiac



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Assumed Unrequited Love, Body Swap, But none of it comes of anything and it's largely negative lol, Emma tries to show off magically and hilarity ensues, Eventual SwanQueen, F/F, Lots of Hook Hate tbh, Rating may change/tags may be added as we go, Terrible communication skills abound, You'll have to wade through some Captain Swan, brief mentions of past abuse, death-unnamed characters and animals only, fluff and angst mostly, mentions of gore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-03-24 15:22:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 55,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13813968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyltiac/pseuds/nyltiac
Summary: After a magical mishap, Regina and Emma find themselves in each other's bodies. When they can't figure out how to set things right, they have to buckle down to learn how to get out of this mess--and learn about each other along the way.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> What up what up! Ya girl is back for another shot at writing some Swanqueen! 
> 
> I love the idea of body swap stories and wanted to write one so I did. That's my only excuse. Hopefully it's not too similar to anyone else's--I haven't read too many of them to know if mine's super original. 
> 
> I set this vaguely after the events of Neverland but without the whole "Regina-sacrifices-her-happiness-to-give-Emma-and-Henry-a-life-together" stuff. I didn't put a whole lot of thought into how they stop Pan from destroying Storybrooke and I don't care to! I just wanted some Swanqueen stuff! Also this complete disregard for researching the canon may come up a couple times because I just don't care about the canon past season 2 :D There's only so much effort I want to put into fixing the mistakes the writers made. 
> 
> I'm going to try to post a chapter a week, with new chapters coming on Saturdays. I'm posting two chapters today to get us into it, but after this it'll just be one at a time. As with my last fanfiction, I will put content warnings at the beginning of each chapter. For chapter one we've got some Captain Swan bullshit but don't worry about it. Any and all Captain Swan that comes up will be dealt with properly--by talking smack about it and then chucking it out into the garbage. 
> 
> There might be smut eventually, I haven't decided yet. If I add it in I'll change the rating from M to E.
> 
> Okay, on to the fanfic.

As usual, Regina woke with the dawn, the early morning light filtering through the windows its own kind of alarm clock. She refused to open her eyes as she stretched a little before returning to her curled up position. The comforter she lay under was still so snug and warm, and she didn’t exactly _want_ to face the day.

The town had been calm for ages, which was a special kind of treat in a way, but at the same time it was endlessly boring. It was like it had been before. She woke up, got Henry ready for school, dropped him off at the bus stop, went to Granny’s for coffee, avoided interaction there as best as she could, and went to work. She made it back to the bus stop in time to pick Henry up, helped him with his homework, made dinner, continued her work from the day until she put Henry to bed, then tried to relax. Sure it was often interrupted by Henry’s other mother when she got time with him, but the schedule largely stayed the same.

It was tiresome.

For a while she’d had something with Robin, but Robin was long gone and Regina was alone. If Henry wasn’t around she was in the mansion by herself, pretending as usual that it suited her just fine. Of course there were the forced dinners with Emma or the Charmings that Henry insisted upon, but she was on her own most of the time.

Given her relationship status, the sudden shifting on the other side of the bed and the arm that was then thrown around her torso shot a bolt of terror through the mayor she hadn’t felt in quite a while. She’d had the dreams before, of waking up to her former husband the King, feeling like she was still trapped in her loveless, miserable marriage, forced to perform wifely duties she’d absolutely despised. Normally the moment of panic at the thought was enough to jolt her from her dream and by the time she opened her eyes she was back in her room in the mansion in Storybrooke, her marriage decades behind her.

Which was why when she opened her eyes and found that not only was the arm still tight around her but she was in an unfamiliar place, she shot up, shoving hurriedly at the other person’s hand. She lurched from the bed and stumbled a few feet away, a scream threatening to rip itself from her throat but she held it back, scrambling for some semblance of composure—if she lost her composure or lost her bearings, whoever it was might hurt her.

The room she was in was open and airy, the walls made of exposed brick. A glance to the left showed the beams of an open room and a staircase leading down on to the main floor. She had a feeling she knew what she’d find as she hurried to look, and sure enough she saw the Charmings’ apartment down below.

How the hell had she ended up in the Charmings’ apartment?

“You okay, love?” a man asked from behind her.

Regina turned back to the bed and felt like her stomach was about to drop through the floor.

Killian Jones was rubbing his eyes blearily with one hand. Her gaze slid to the famous hook on the nightstand on the side of the bed he lay on before it flicked back to him. As he pushed the covers back and sat up, Regina saw he was shirtless. Her stomach came back up from dropping through the floor so it could attempt to bring up her dinner from the previous night.

“What, cat got your tongue?” he asked her as she stared at him. “Or did I actually blow your mind last night like I warned you I would?”

Yep, she was definitely going to be sick.

She’d slept with Hook? Why couldn’t she remember that? And what on earth would have possessed her to sleep with him in the first place? Sure she might have entertained the notion once upon a time, but _now_? He was so sleazy, so rude, so much of her enemy even still, and so _dating her friend_.

Regina tried to take a deep breath and steady herself. There was no way she’d slept with Hook though. She couldn’t remember doing anything even near him the previous night. It was one of the few nights that hadn’t followed the typical routine. Snow had taken Henry to the loft to spend the night with his grandparents while Regina had gone to her vault to continue Emma’s magic lessons. She and Emma had worked for a few hours, she’d cleaned up some of Emma’s control issues, given her a solid scolding when Emma had read off some random spell in an attempt to show off how good she was getting at reading spell books, worked on using their powers as a team in preparation for the possible next big catastrophe to hit the town, and then said their goodbyes. At no point after that did Regina see Hook, nor did she go to the Charmings’. She’d gone home, had her tea, read her books, and gone to bed for the night.

She turned away from Hook as he went to stand, terrified that he’d be fully naked instead of just shirtless.

“You’re acting strange,” he said. “You’re never up this early. Are you feeling okay?”

Regina shook her head and took off down the stairs, racing across the kitchen to the bathroom. She really did feel like she was going to be sick, and she wasn’t going to embarrass herself further in this ordeal by puking all over Snow White and Prince Charming’s apartment.

She shut the door of the bathroom behind her and ran for the toilet. Once there she stood over it for a long time, bracing herself, sure that her disgust with her wake up would eventually result in some kind of bodily rejection.

“Emma?” she heard Snow call sleepily.

Shit, and now everyone was waking up because of how she’d gone stomping through the house. She couldn’t let Snow freaking White catch her here!

“She woke up a few minutes ago,” Hook called down to Snow from what sounded like still up in the loft. “She’s acting strange.”

“Mom?”

_Shit_.

Henry had slept over at the loft. What was he going to say about her being there?

Regina turned away from the toilet and gathered her magic to transport herself out of the apartment but caught sight of a flash of yellow and white in the mirror out of the corner of her eye. She froze before she slowly looked down at her hands.

White magic was dancing across her hands where purple usually did, and it glowed brightly before suddenly stuttering out. Her eyes widened for a moment and she questioned how her magic had so suddenly gone completely light before she realized she was wearing bright blue nail polish that had chipped off of a couple of the nails. Closer inspection showed that not only was the polish chipped but her nails were all uneven lengths as if she’d chewed them.

The thought was preposterous. She didn’t chew her nails. She was much more refined and had much more self control than to ever even _think_ about chewing her nails. It wasn’t like she was—

Her stomach lurched again.

Regina Mills didn’t sleep with pirates, didn’t stay at the Charmings’ apartment, and didn’t chew her nails, but she knew who did.

She went to the mirror and managed to clap her hand over her mouth before she screamed.

Staring back at her wasn’t Regina Mills.

It was Emma Swan.

“Mom, are you okay?” Henry’s voice asked, much closer to the bathroom door now. He knocked and she heard him trying the handle.

“I’m fine,” she croaked, horrified to hear Emma’s voice instead of her own.

How had this happened? _Why_ had this happened? What had gone on that she was suddenly in Emma’s body? And worse, where was _Emma_?

It occurred to her that if her consciousness was out of her own body then there was space for another consciousness to fill in. The idea of Emma inhabiting Regina’s own body filled her with equal amounts of fury and dread.

This whole thing had Emma’s doing all over it. Emma had to have screwed something up. Regina had far too much control over her own magic to have messed up in this way.

“Are you sure, Emma?” David called. “We can get you to see Whale if you need someone.”

“I don’t need anything,” Regina called back. “I’ll be fine. I just thought—I don’t know, I felt strangely. But I’m fine now.” She could hear that her—Emma’s?—voice was higher-pitched than usual and there was a note of hysteria that Regina hated, even knowing it wasn’t actually her own voice people were hearing. “Everyone just go back to sleep.”

“You should know we can’t,” Snow said, still sounding worried.

Regina frowned, watching in the mirror as Emma’s lips turned down. That wasn’t going to get any less disconcerting. She turned away from the glass.

“I’ll be out in a minute,” she promised.

She couldn’t let the others know. If any of them knew it was Regina… She couldn’t handle the thought of the embarrassment that she’d woken up snuggled up against _Hook_. There was also the fact that she’d clearly failed as a teacher if Emma’s magic was so out of control.

She took a few moments to collect herself before she finally left the bathroom. The whole family was there to greet her, all standing in the kitchen and all anxiously looking at her. Henry broke away from the others and went to look at her more closely. Reflexively, she bent down to be at eye level with him as she always did.

“Are you sure you’re okay, Mom?” he asked, his worry clear in his face.

“I’m sure,” Regina said, not wanting her son to be afraid. “I just felt funny. I’m fine now.”

She gently brushed his hair back from his face, cupping his cheek for a moment. She smiled, hoping to ease his fears, and after a moment he tried on a small smile of his own.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “I just don’t think any of us remember a time you’ve woken up before 10 on a weekend.”

Regina resisted the urge to roll her eyes. How lazy was Emma when Regina wasn’t riding her?

“I have some things I have to do today,” she told him. “I had to wake up early in any case. You don’t have to worry about me, Henry.”

Henry smiled and moved forward to hug her. Regina straightened and put her arms around him, looking over his head at the Charmings and Hook.

“What are you doing today?” Hook asked curiously. “I thought we’d made plans.”

“Regina asked me to come over today,” Regina said, feeling strangely about talking about herself in this way. “She wanted to work on some magical abilities she said I need help on.”

“Wasn’t that what you did with her last night?” Hook asked, looking annoyed with the idea.

“Yes, but I still have a lot I need to learn.”

He nearly glared at Regina at that, and she wondered what about that thought bothered him. Whatever Emma and Hook’s plans had been couldn’t have been so exciting that cancelling them would be that much of an issue.

“I’ll whip up some breakfast,” Snow said, trying to sound cheery despite the sudden tension between Hook and Regina in Emma’s body. “How’s pancakes sound?”

“With chocolate chips?” Henry asked, pulling away from his mother to face his grandmother, a hopeful smile on his face.

“Of course! You can’t have Sunday morning pancakes without chocolate chips!”

“I’m just going to take a shower and get ready to go,” Regina said.

“Are you sure, Emma?” Snow asked. “You need to eat.”

“I’m sure,” Regina said quickly. “Regina has plenty of food over there. I’ll eat with her.”

Hook’s glare intensified and Regina resisted the urge to tell him to buzz off. Instead of telling him to mind his own business, she hurried up the stairs to Emma’s bedroom area and hunted through her dresser. She grabbed the first shirt—a red flannel, ugh—and the first pair of pants—jeans, _ugh_ —she found, grabbed some underwear with a hint of a blush, and then hurried back down the stairs to the bathroom.

Once in the bathroom, she turned the water on and reached for the hem of her shirt. She froze when it got halfway up her torso to just under her breasts.

No, not her breasts— _Emma’s_ breasts.

The thought filled her with such an intense embarrassment she turned bright red in seconds. She couldn’t shower, could she? That would be such an intense invasion of privacy. Her need to shower every morning would have to wait until she was back in her own body. She couldn’t very well spy on Emma’s naked body.

A part of her wondered if it would really be such a bad thing. It wasn’t like she was going to do anything with Emma’s naked body. She’d just be cleaning it.

Regina shook that off and forced the thought away. She wasn’t going to shower because she knew the urge to look—and god forbid, _touch_ —would be far too strong.

The mayor had hated the sheriff for a long time, but once that had faded they’d become something like friends. They co-parented Henry together, they worked together, they saved the town together, on occasion they shared lunches to discuss town events… Somewhere along the line Regina had recognized that she wanted more from the blonde that had once driven her crazy, and she’d been fighting her own desires every step of the way since them.

At first there had been a glimmer of hope in Regina that something might happen. Somewhere around the time in Neverland she’d felt truly connected to Emma, and afterwards had considered there might have been something between her and Emma. Then the damned pirate had shown up and disrupted that line of thinking, so Regina had set those desires aside.

She looked at the reflection of Emma in the mirror again and took a deep breath, then turned away. She took the flannel and the jeans and stumbled through dressing herself with her eyes closed. She didn’t bother changing the underwear Emma wore and didn’t bother finding a bra, instead just hurrying through the process of clothing the body she was in as quickly as humanly possible.

That done, she walked out of the bathroom again.

“I thought you were showering?” David asked curiously.

“I’m already running late.”

“Regina’s got you on a tight schedule, huh?” David said a bit teasingly.

“Well you know Regina,” Snow said lightly. “Always has to do things her way.”

Regina frowned but forced herself not to bite back.

“I’ll be back in a little bit,” she told everyone.

“Love you, sweetie,” Snow called.

Regina smiled tightly at the woman but when Henry said, “Love you, Mom,” and went to hug her goodbye, her smile turned real. She hugged him back and kissed him on the forehead.

“I love you, too, Henry,” she said.

He let her go and went back to the breakfast bar to watch Snow as she made his pancakes.

Regina watched him a moment and that was when Hook swept in.

“Call me when you’re done with our dear mayor,” he said, sounding half teasing and half bitter.

He pulled her in by the waist and Regina was horrified when his lips covered her own. She knew he was only kissing who he thought was Emma, but still, she recoiled.

“I will,” she said, breaking away from the kiss abruptly to speak. She broke out of his hold, went to the door, grabbed some of Emma’s boots off the boot rack, tugged them on, and took off out the door. She had just enough sense to grab the keys to that awful little Volkswagen off one of the key hooks before she slammed the door behind her.

It took her no time at all to get into the car and drive across town, and when she parked in front of the mansion she stormed up the steps, ready to give Emma a piece of her mind.

When she tried the front door she found it locked and cursed quietly. Of course she’d locked the door. She wasn’t an idiot. Realizing she didn’t have a key, she waved her hand in front of the door handle, trying to call up her magic to unlock it that way, but the white light that sprang forth only misted towards the lock before it faded abruptly. Regina frowned and tried again with the same result.

She had never had issues using magic before. What the hell was the problem now?

Deciding to table that thought for later, she pounded on the door. If Emma slept in as late as her family said then Regina would need to try her hardest to make as much noise as possible. Luckily, in Emma’s body, it didn’t seem to be much of an issue.

“Regina!” she shouted, aware enough of herself and her surroundings to recognize that she couldn’t shout for Emma from Emma’s own body. “Regina, open the door immediately!”

She would carry on for as long as she needed to—it wasn’t like _she_ was going to look like the crazy one.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: Magical mishaps and talk of wanting to see someone nakey but respect abounds in this chapter and no nakeyness is seen non-consensually. 
> 
> Part of the reason I wanted to post the second chapter today is because it has my favorite ever bit of writing I've ever come up with in my life.

Emma felt like she was floating on clouds. Her bed was absurdly comfortable and she couldn’t remember when she’d gotten blankets that were so damn soft. And her _pillows_. Maybe she’d been super tired the night before and that was why the whole situation felt like heaven, but she wasn’t going to question it.

What she was going to question was the faraway banging noise. It was faint at first but as she drifted further and further from sleep it got a bit louder. She could hear someone familiar yelling, too.

“What the hell is that, Killian?” she asked grumpily. She rolled to his side of the bed and reached for him.

When her hands met nothing she groaned and pushed herself up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes before looking blearily around the room.

She was on her feet in seconds as she looked around the bedroom she found herself in. It wasn’t anywhere close to the loft, nor was it anything like Killian’s place. It was all greys and whites, and while the shag area rug was comfortable on her feet, Emma was pretty certain she’d never willingly put a shag rug anywhere in her own home. She _certainly_ didn’t ever put up _wallpaper_ —what self respecting person put up _wallpaper_ anymore?

Emma glanced towards the window as she heard the shouting again. It was someone banging on the front door, but who the hell was awake so early on a Sunday? It wasn’t even 8! She went to the window to take a look and maybe even shout back at them for disturbing her sleep, but her view was blocked by a portico.

With a roll of her eyes, Emma cursed out “rich people with their stupid fancy front doors” before she realized that she recognized the front walkway. It was simple, just a brick walkway lined with small shrubs, but she definitely recognized it. And now that she was thinking in that vein she recognized the portico—she’d walked inside under it plenty of times in the last few years.

She was in Regina’s house.

She shot a sudden fearful look at the bed. If she was in Regina’s house, whose bed was that? It certainly wasn’t Henry’s, but Emma had never been invited into the mayor’s private bedroom—no matter how often she thought about it.

Her not-so-secret secret crush on the former Queen had started shortly after she’d realized how all of her walls and all of her anger was just a defense mechanism to avoid the hurt she always thought was coming. It had started a bit before Henry had been taken to Neverland, and Emma had only ever gotten closer to the mayor. It was only because of Regina’s guarded nature and Killian’s very open admiration of Emma that the blonde had chosen the pirate. She wasn’t so stupid that she’d chase someone who was never going to reciprocate her feelings. And sure Killian wasn’t the best example of a significant other, but he wasn’t the worst either.

Emma hurried from the bedroom, putting aside all thoughts of Regina and her bed—well, trying to at least—and ran down the stairs to the front door. She realized on the way she was wearing a silk nightgown, but she didn’t question it too much. If she’d stayed the night she must have borrowed it. She _had_ gone out drinking with Killian after her magic lessons with Regina. She’d probably just had one too many. How she’d ended up at Regina’s would be a question to ask after she shut up whoever was on the front steps.

She unlocked the door and swung it open, starting with, “Look, I don’t care who you are, it’s not even 8 in the morning yet and—“ before she broke off abruptly.

Standing in front of her was…

Well, _her_.

She’d once read somewhere—in a clickbait article she’d found online—that if a person was cloned and met that clone they wouldn’t recognize themselves. That was proving to be alarmingly false considering she was staring at her own freaking face.

“How long were you planning on sleeping, Miss Swan?” her clone asked, shoving past her without hesitating. “Honestly, I’ve been out here nearly ten minutes shouting for you to let me in.”

“I—I— _What_?” Emma managed to get out.

It was only then that she realized her voice was different.

“Wait, what the hell is this?” she asked, half to ask the question, half to hear her changed voice again. “What’s going on? Who the hell cloned me?”

“No one cloned you, you idiot,” her clone spat. “Something went wrong and I woke up in your body. Clearly you woke up in mine. Now we need to figure out how to fix it before that filthy pirate tries to kiss me again. I swear I’ll chop his other hand off before I let him even touch me another time.”

Emma stared at her double, not knowing how to process everything that was coming at her at the moment. Who was in her body if it wasn’t her?

Wait, whose body was she in if not her own?

She swung around away from her clone and searched for the closest mirror. For someone as put together as Regina, she didn’t have any easily accessible mirrors, and Emma ended up having to run to the bathroom at the back of the house. She shoved inside and ran directly to the sink to look in the mirror there.

Her eyes—no, not _her_ eyes—widened in shock when she saw the mayor staring back at her.

“This is a joke,” she said, surprised again to hear Regina’s voice instead of her own. Still, Regina’s mouth moved in the mirror when Emma spoke, and the words were what she’d meant to say.

“An incredibly sick joke,” she heard her own voice answer from outside of the bathroom. “Now come back out of there. I don’t want you where I can’t see you when you’re in my body.”

Emma walked back out, ogling herself.

“Regina?” she asked.

“Yes, it’s Regina,” the other woman said. “In your body. And you’re in my body. And I’m wondering what the _hell_ you did to us to get us in this situation!”

“Why do you automatically assume it was my fault?” Emma asked, immediately set on the defensive. “It could just as easily have been your fault!”

“I had decades more practice with my magic,” Regina said with a scowl. “Not to mention I’m not a complete buffoon with a knack for screwing up even the most basic of tasks!”

“Oh like you’ve never made a mistake before,” Emma said, rolling her eyes.

“Don’t you roll my eyes at me!” Regina snapped. She paused as the two of them realized just what she’d said. Regina shook her head quickly. “Forget that. We need to fix this. I need to get back in my body before the pirate attempts to molest me again.”

“Give me a break Regina, he’s not molesting anyone, least of all _you_ ,” Emma said. “He thought you were me. And you _are_ me. You’re just… me without my brain.”

“And here I thought you didn’t have a brain at all,” Regina said sourly.

“Watch it!” Emma growled. “If you’re going to act like an ass then maybe I’ll find a way for Storybrooke’s least beloved mayor to resign her post and try dating Whale.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Regina hissed.

“Try me,” Emma shot back.

It was so strange for Emma to see her own face contort in anger and to see her own fists clench and unclench almost reflexively as Regina clearly fought to keep her cool.

“We have to figure this out,” Regina bit out through clenched teeth. “I want to be back in my body.”

“And I don’t?” Emma pointed out. “What do you suggest we do?”

“Take my hand,” Regina said. “If we both use our magic then I can direct it to fix the problem. I don’t care if I have to rip us both out of these bodies by force, I’m not going to spend another second as _you_. Just draw mine up.”

Emma nodded, taking Regina’s hand. Aware of just how bizarre this was, Emma struggled to call up Regina’s magic while Regina attempted to do the same. Emma watched white magic flicker easily into the other woman’s palm and hated how quickly it had come up, but she saw it flicker out just as quickly. Regina frowned and Emma saw the magic resurface before disappearing once more.

Delight flooded Emma. Regina was having trouble with Emma’s magic. She knew she shouldn’t be happy about that considering the situation they were in, but she liked the idea that she had something Regina couldn’t handle.

She set that aside for the moment, planning on teasing the other woman when they were back in their own bodies, and focused on Regina’s magic.

Emma dug down deep and found the spring of purple inside of Regina and started to pull it up so that she could use it. Her hands smoked instantly and her eyes widened as she watched the purple pouring out of her. She hadn’t meant to do that. She tried redirecting it to an impatient Regina but the magic blasted out of her suddenly and launched Regina across the hallway.

Regina hit the wall with a crash and Emma heard her gasp as the air was knocked out of her. Emma watched the other woman crumple to the ground, where she barely managed to catch herself and end up on her knees as she panted for breath.

Realizing she had just as little control over Regina’s magic as Regina had over Emma’s, Emma quickly pulled it back inside, stuffing it down as quickly as possible.

“I’m sorry!” she hurried to say, moving forward to crouch in front of Regina. Emma realized again how bizarre the situation was as she tried to comfort the other woman and brushed back her own blonde hair in an attempt to be soothing.

Regina swatted Emma’s hand away.

“Leave me alone,” she wheezed, glaring at the other woman.

Emma scurried back and settled to sit nearby, anxious that she’d need to help again. She looped her arms around her knees and watched as Regina struggled to breathe again, wishing the other woman’s pride would take a back seat for just a second.

“Can you please sit without flashing my underwear all over the place?” Regina huffed as she slowly began to regain control of her breathing.

Emma glanced down and saw she was still wearing a silk nightgown, but it was short enough that with her knees up the way they were she was flashing Regina. She supposed it was lucky Regina had gone to bed wearing underwear, but she quickly brought her knees back down and struggled to stand without giving Regina another peek under the nightdress.

Of course, it was all stuff Regina had seen before considering it was her own body. Emma wondered suddenly how Regina had gotten into something other than pajamas. Had she managed to muster enough magic to change that way? Emma kind of hoped so but she doubted it. Then again, maybe Regina had gotten a good look and liked what she’d seen. Emma tried to push that thought away. She didn’t need to think about Regina seeing her naked body, and she definitely didn’t need to like the thought—she was dating _Killian_ , damn it.

“What do we do if we can’t get back in our own bodies?” Emma asked.

“Oh no, we’re getting back into—“

“What if we can’t though?” Emma interrupted, needing Regina to actually think about the situation at hand. “What if we’re stuck like this for a while? We’re gonna have to like… go to the bathroom and shower and all that. And my parents will ask why I’m acting like such a bitch and Henry is bound to notice—” She broke off, her eyes widening. “And Killian. What about—“

“Well you can rest assured that I am _not_ interested in sleeping with that ugly pirate so you don’t have to worry about me using your body to get with him,” Regina said coldly.

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Emma said, her frustration mounting. Why did Regina have to be such a dick about him all the time? “What if we can’t get back to how we were? If he and I are dating but I’m in your body then what’s going to happen to him and I? Are we just going to have to deal with it or something?”

“I swear by every god ever created, Miss Swan,” Regina growled, “if you let that man anywhere near my body I’ll rip him to pieces and make you watch.”

Emma exhaled a sharp huff.

“I’m just saying, if we don’t fix this then we’ve got a lot of explaining to do,” she said. “Because if we don’t then my parents will have to get used to seeing your face all the time and I’ll have to figure something out with Killian.”

“Then we should get to work, shouldn’t we?” Regina said coolly. She forced herself up from her knees. She ran her hands over her front as if smoothing one of her dresses, the motion seeming almost reflexive as she straightened like she’d never fallen at all. “We’ll go to my vault and see if we can figure out what exactly you did. I’d thank you to avoid taking a shower for now. And when you change I’d like to be in the room.”

“What?” Emma asked in confusion. “Why?”

“So I can pick the outfit and so that I can be sure you aren’t going to do anything with me,” Regina said simply.

“You have to believe I’m not going to do anything weird,” Emma said, feeling a blush rising in her cheeks. Was it because Regina didn’t trust her or was it because Regina didn’t trust anyone that she was making this request? Emma hoped it was the latter.

“I don’t want you seeing me naked,” Regina insisted.

“I don’t want to change with you in the room.”

“I’ve seen it all before, Emma.”

“Yeah, but it’s still me in here, even if it is your body.”

“I’m not letting you change until I’m in the room and we’re not leaving until you look presentable as me,” Regina said firmly. “So if you’d like us to just sit around until your family worries, that’s fine, but I’d like to get back to how things were.”

“God you’re such a psycho sometimes,” Emma huffed and turned to stalk up the stairs. Regina paused to remove the boots she wore before ascending the carpeted stair but followed closely behind Emma. “You know I’m your friend right? And we’re _just_ friends. I wouldn’t do anything to your body. And even if I wanted to, you’re in my body and could do weird stuff, too. It’d be stupid of me to do anything given your track history of revenge.”

“I need to be sure,” Regina said stiffly. “I’ve had enough bad things happen to me to just let this kind of thing go.”

That puzzled Emma. She opened her mouth to press Regina for a little more but the other woman said, “And no, I’m not going to talk about it,” before Emma could say anything.

Regina led the way to her bedroom and straight through to the walk-in closet. She began going through the clothing she had, eyeballing a handful of pant suits that Emma prayed she wouldn’t end up picking.

She breathed a sigh of relief when the pant suits were left behind but then Regina was pulling down a black dress that Emma recognized and knew fit Regina way too well. Emma celebrated a little whenever Regina wore it because it almost inevitably meant that she’d get to sneak a peek of Regina’s amazing curves.

‘ _How am I supposed to pull that off?_ ’ Emma asked herself, chewing idly on a fingernail as she watched Regina hunt for matching shoes and some underwear. ‘ _I suppose the same way she does. And god does she pull that thing off. Wish I could pull it off of her and then we—no. Nope. No you don’t. You have a boyfriend, horn dog. And you’re in_ her _body after you just promised you wouldn’t do anything weird. Don’t make it weird._ ’

“Here we go,” Regina said, handing the outfit over. “And stop chewing my nails. I don’t want to end up with your nails before this is over.” She held up a hand to show off Emma’s chewed nails and chipped paint.

Emma arched an eyebrow, imagining how good it looked with Regina’s perfectly perfect brows, but she took her fingernail out of her mouth and took the offered outfit.

“Eyes on me,” Regina added as she stood there.

Emma sighed but did as she was asked and stared Regina down as she stripped out of the nightgown and underwear from the night before. She did want to see what Regina had going on and she couldn’t deny it, but she also didn’t want to upset her friend or make her uncomfortable. If she was going to see Regina naked it would be because Regina wanted her to.

“You know I could do this to you, too,” Emma told the other woman as she pulled on the underwear and bra she’d been given, making sure that her fingers didn’t linger if only to ease Regina’s worry. “Force you to strip and let me watch to make sure you’re not doing anything freaky with my body. I know for a fact I don’t sleep in my jeans, too. And if you’re not able to use my magic then you didn’t change clothes magically.”

“I changed in the bathroom of your parents’ loft with your parents, your boyfriend, and my son on the other side of the door,” Regina shot back. “Believe me, I wasn’t doing anything.”

“Well how much did you see?” Emma asked.

“Nothing,” Regina replied, and even in Regina’s body Emma’s superpower still worked—Regina was telling the truth. “I kept my eyes off of it all. I didn’t change everything if we’re being honest here. I’m wearing the underwear you wore last night and I’m not wearing a bra.”

“So you’ve been wandering around with my tits out?” Emma asked as she pulled the dress over her head, and when her head popped out of the neck hole she saw a blush racing through the other woman’s cheeks. She grinned widely. “And you’re making me wear all this? Honestly, I’m being forced to wear a lacy bra and a thong with the whole get up and heels, and you’re just running through town in last night’s underwear with my tits out.”

“I’m not running through town,” Regina grumbled. “And I panicked. I just needed to find you to try to switch our bodies back. Now that we know it’s not so simple we have to keep up appearances that everything is normal. And I refuse to be seen in public with panty line, so you have to wear a thong.”

“We could just tell everyone what happened,” Emma suggested as she slipped into the torturously high heels. She noticed that they set Regina’s slight frame just above her own and understood suddenly why Regina always wore heels like that.

“No we can’t,” Regina said stubbornly. “I don’t want anyone knowing about this.”

“Why, because it’s such a hardship for you, being me?” Emma asked. “Magic happens. And like you’ve refused to stop pointing out, I haven’t really figured this whole magic thing out just yet.”

“I don’t want people to know,” Regina said again. “We’ll handle it and then _maybe_ we can explain the strange behavior ‘you’ had this morning with your family.”

Emma stared at her for a moment, wanting to continue to argue, but she knew Regina was gearing up for a fight with the way she was squaring her shoulders and lifting her chin. Emma wondered if she’d ever looked so fierce when she’d been in her own body, but it seemed Regina’s physical intensity was a by-product of her mind, not her looks.

Deciding she’d rather avoid the argument, Emma sighed and nodded.

“Fine, we can just get going then—“ she started, but Regina was already shaking her head.

“I need to do my—your—whatever—make up,” Regina said.

“Are you serious right now?” Emma asked.

“I am,” Regina said. “Now sit down and face me.”

“I can do it if you want,” Emma said.

“Not a chance, Swan. Just sit down and let me do this.”

Emma shot an annoyed glare at the other woman before she went to Regina’s vanity and sat down at the chair. She faced the mirror and began to examine Regina’s face. She hadn’t actually gotten a good look at Regina’s face without make up before—she hadn’t even gotten the chance when she’d looked in the mirror earlier considering she was in shock.

“Turn towards me,” Regina barked.

Emma rolled her eyes but did as she was asked. Regina stepped into her space and began to pull out powders, eyeliner, eye shadow mascara, and lipstick.

“Do I really have to go for the full look?” Emma demanded. “I’m not making you do any of this stuff!”

“I don’t want anyone seeing me anything less than my best,” Regina said. “I know that _you_ have the day off today so you won’t be seen by anyone important, but I have meetings in the afternoon. Once we swap back into our own bodies I’ll have to get to work.”

“You really have to work on a Sunday?” Emma asked as Regina set to work putting the make up on her face. “Don’t you ever take a break?”

“I’m the mayor,” Regina reminded her. “I don’t get to take breaks.”

“The town isn’t actually real,” Emma pointed out. “You created it. You couldn’t create it so that it would run itself?”

“The town was created by my magic but it’s a real town in every sense of the word,” Regina said, sounding annoyed. “And as its mayor I can’t take a day off just for fun.”

Emma heaved a sigh.

“Whatever,” she muttered.

Emma felt like Regina was loading up her face with the make up and she couldn’t remember seeing the brunette wearing as much as she was putting on her. Sure Regina didn’t usually look like she wanted to rock a natural look, but it was understated for the most part. Nothing like Emma had seen of her old look as the Evil Queen.

Emma took the time to watch Regina, still not totally used to seeing her own face right in front of her. She noticed little quirks that weren’t her own on her face though—Regina pursed her lips like she did in her own body, and it was a little amusing to Emma to see the expression on her face.

When Regina was done, she took a step back and looked over her handiwork.

“Do I look gorgeous?” Emma joked.

“You look like me,” Regina said simply.

The comment caught Emma off guard. Regina didn’t say anything positively about her own appearance, which seemed strange considering Regina was a gorgeous woman who clearly knew how to present herself. Of course she wasn’t saying anything negatively either, but Emma couldn’t help but wonder why she hadn’t even responded to the joke. Maybe it was just because she was stressed out.

Emma peeked in the mirror as Regina turned away, and she saw that even though it had seemed like a lot of make up, Regina had done up her face as always. Did Regina just always use a lot? It felt like a lot on her face, even if it didn’t look like it. Emma had noticed Regina concentrated a lot of powder at her temples and wondered why that spot in particular was the spot Regina worried about, but she shrugged it off. If she investigated now she knew Regina would chew her out.

“Let’s get going to the vault then,” Emma said. “Did you walk here?”

“No, I took the death trap you call a car,” Regina replied.

“Well let’s go then,” Emma said, heading for the door. It took her a moment to steady herself on the heels. She had obviously worn heels before, but the particular ones Regina had picked out took some getting used to, and Emma wondered briefly if it was a kind of punishment the other woman had cooked up on the fly. “Let’s get this thing over with so we can go back to normal.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you were wondering what bit of writing had me wanting to share a second chapter tonight, this is it:
> 
>  
> 
> "Who the hell cloned me?”
> 
> “No one cloned you, you idiot,” her clone spat.
> 
>  
> 
> I literally laugh about that every time I think of it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: brief accidental violence/pain as magic is unable to be controlled, quick mention of previous torture (referenced from the Neverland plotline)
> 
> They're still just figuring it all out--this chapter is mostly exposition and such, setting us up with the things we need to know to get to the end :D

Regina flat out refused to get back into the bug but refused to let Emma even touch the handle of the driver’s side of the Mercedes, and that was why Emma sat pouting in the passenger seat.

“People probably think you let me drive your car,” Emma pointed out.

“Let them think that,” Regina replied coolly. “I’d rather them think I let you drive it once then actually let you drive it.”

“I’m not a bad driver, Regina,” Emma huffed, crossing her arms over her chest.

“How do you manage to make _me_ look like an insolent little brat?” Regina demanded.

“I’m not being an insolent brat!” Emma protested. “I’m annoyed that you clearly think I’m a moron who can’t do anything right!”

“I mean you are saying those things from _my_ mouth while inhabiting _my_ body,” Regina pointed out. “You clearly can’t control magic. Yours _or_ mine.”

“And you can control mine?” Emma shot back. “How did you using my magic go? Well? Because I’m pretty sure you’ve got about as much control over mine as I have over yours.”

“I’ll figure yours out a lot faster than you figure mine out,” Regina vowed.

Emma rolled her eyes but sat back, keeping her arms crossed, glaring out the passenger side window. When they pulled into the graveyard and up to the mausoleum, she got out and slammed the door of the car. She watched Regina flinch at the sound and glare at her.

“Don’t ever slam my car door again,” Regina growled before moving towards the Mills family mausoleum.

Regina stalked up to the doors and opened them with a key off of her key ring. She stepped back to let Emma inside before she closed the doors again, glancing around to make sure that no one was in the cemetery to see them.

“Normally I use my magic to move this,” she said of the huge stone coffin that occupied the center of the mausoleum and covered the stairs to her vault. “You’re going to have to help me with it.”

“With your magic?” Emma asked.

“No,” Regina said quickly. “Definitely not. I don’t want you blasting a hole in the side of this building and bringing the roof down on top of us. It’s actually lighter than you’d think so we can push it.”

The two women moved to the side of the coffin and as Regina placed her hands on the stone she examined them for a moment. She had always admired Emma’s hands and her arms. They were strong and adept, something she hated admitting she often found the blonde.

Having Emma’s hands was strange. For the brief time that Regina had entertained the notion that something might come up between the two of them, she’d wondered what it would be like to be touched by Emma. They’d never really touched excepting holding hands to do magic together or punching each other in the face. Now Regina was in control of Emma’s hands and could theoretically do what she wanted with them, but the thought of it was absurd and she shoved it away.

As she shoved the thought away, Emma was shoving the coffin, and Regina hurried to follow suit. Their combined strength made easy work of the coffin and Regina led the way down the stairs, turning left to head into the vault.

“Now, we need to retrace our steps,” she said. “Once we know how this happened we can fix it. Yesterday you practiced your magic and then we practiced using our magic together. Did anything strange happen that you remember?”

“Not really,” Emma admitted. “We just went through it all like we always do.”

“Are you sure?” Regina asked. “There has to have been something different. Did you do anything you haven’t before?”

Emma racked her brain, trying to think of something—anything—that would give them a clue as to what happened.

“I mean we’ve never teleported things together,” Emma said. “Maybe it was like The Fly and instead of teleporting things we accidentally got mashed together.”

“We’re not in some 80s horror film,” Regina countered, already annoyed. “And besides, neither of us is a hideous mutation.”

“That almost sounds like a compliment coming from you,” Emma quipped.

Regina glared at her.

“It’s not that,” Regina said. “You did well with that—“

“Okay, that really was a compliment,” Emma said.

“Will you focus?” Regina snapped. “What else happened last night that could have caused this?”

“I don’t know, Regina!” Emma said. “All we did was practice my magic, I practiced reading spells, then we worked on using our magic together.”

“That’s it!” Regina said, sounding almost excited. “What spell did you read?”

“How should I know?” Emma asked. “I don’t know what any of it says. I just know how to read it.”

“What do you mean you don’t know what it says?”

“I mean that I can see it and read it phonetically but I can’t actually understand any of it,” Emma explained obviously. “It’s like how you can pronounce words in French but not actually get what you’re saying.”

Regina pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to keep herself under control. She wanted to slap the blonde so badly sometimes.

“What did the book look like?” she asked.

“It was a leather bound book with swirly designs,” Emma said. “And it had four orange things that were almost like opals in the cover. Oh, and the page opposite the one that I read had a picture of a cat on it.”

“A cat?” Regina asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Emma said with a shrug. “Like I said, I don’t understand it.”

Regina turned to survey the room. She had dozens—maybe even hundreds—of books brought over from the other realm. She immediately began searching through the piles, hunting for the right book. Emma helped her as well and she wondered how on earth Emma didn’t remember what she’d done with the book.

“This is why I yelled at you last night,” Regina informed the blonde as she went through the stacks. “You said I was too worked up over nothing but this is exactly why I told you that you shouldn’t just read off random spells.”

“It wasn’t like I was planning on doing this,” Emma grumbled. “It was an accident, okay Regina? Obviously I know I screwed up here. But the fact that you didn’t know what I was saying when I was reading off the spell kind of says something about your own abilities.”

“ _If_ you remember, Miss Swan, I was busy setting up for our next lesson while you were chattering away,” Regina said primly. “Had I heard all of what you’d said I would have known what spell it was right away.”

“Yeah, sure you would have,” Emma said with a roll of her eyes.

“Ah-ha!” Regina said, grabbing the book from the ground. Emma had tossed the book away and it had landed half behind an enormous trunk. “This is it, correct?”

“I think so,” Emma said as she looked it over. “It looks right, and it has the stones. Look for the page with the cat.”

Regina began hurriedly flicking through the pages. They were so close to being back to normal she could practically taste it. When she found the page with the cat she held it up for Emma to see.

“That’s it!” Emma said excitedly. “What does the cat one mean anyways?”

“It’s for transforming yourself into a cat,” Regina said.

“Oh, duh,” Emma said. “Whatever. What about the other page? What does that page say?”

“It says that to perform the spell to transplant consciousness, one has to read the incantation aloud and then perform some kind of magic with the person they want to swap bodies with,” Regina said. “Then they go to sleep and when they wake up they’ll be in the other person’s body.”

“Perfect,” Emma said. “So we just read it again, do some magic, and then we’ll be able to go back to normal.”

Regina nodded.

“We’ll do something simple,” Regina said. “Clearly we haven’t mastered each other’s magics yet so we’ll have to do something easy so that we won’t blast each other against the nearest wall. Take my hand again.”

Regina offered one hand while she held the book with the other. When Emma took her hand, Regina began to read off the incantation. Emma watched in amazement as she saw her own green eyes glow slightly with the power of the words. Even though the words had felt so foreign on her lips the night before, Regina made it sound like Emma had been speaking that language for as long as she had lived.

“And now we light that candle,” Regina said, gesturing to a candle on a nearby table. “Draw up my magic.”

Emma tried drawing on Regina’s magic, pulling at just the tiniest trickle, not wanting to accidentally draw up too much and hurt Regina again. She managed to get only a small stream and she pulled it up towards the other woman. She figured she would leave it to Regina to direct towards the candle. She just hoped Regina would hurry—the dark magic was volatile, and Emma could feel it roiling in her grip, trying its hardest to lash out at anything it could.

Regina was eager to get this going and be done with it, but the moment she touched Emma’s magic she knew it wouldn’t be enough. Regina tried calling on it, tried pulling it to the surface, but every time she tried she watched it flicker out in her and Emma’s joined hands. The white light would last only a second or two before dying. She could feel her own magic passing through Emma’s hand and seeking out the light magic that Emma’s body produced, but she couldn’t even reach out and harness that to put towards the candle. She couldn’t get the light magic to work for her, and she couldn’t get to her own to use her own.

After nearly ten minutes of Regina struggling, Emma finally couldn’t hold on to Regina’s magic anymore. She tried to pull it back inside but it burst out of her as a wave of heat, scorching Regina’s hand.

Regina let out a scream and ripped her hand away from Emma’s. She clutched the burned hand to her chest, letting out a string of curses. She could hear the skin of that hand fizzling almost like it was cooking and she felt more than a little dizzy at the thought, the agony in her hand only adding to that wooziness.

“Shit!” Emma said as she watched Regina stumble back and sway on the spot. “Regina, what do I do?” Not only had she hurt Regina, but she’d burned her own hand.

“The top drawer of that set,” Regina bit out, nodding her head to a set of drawers. “There should be a small vial with a blue tincture. Get it. _Now_.”

Emma rushed to do as she was told, needing to fix it before it got bad. Not only did she want to help Regina in that moment, but she wanted to avoid screwing up her hand for when she got back in her own body.

She yanked at the top drawer, her hands shaking as she dug through it to find the vial Regina had mentioned. She spotted it in the back and pulled it out.

“Take out the stopper and just pour it directly on my hand,” Regina said urgently, her voice bordering almost on hysterical. Regina hated the sound—it was the second time that day she’d sounded so frightened and emotional, and she wasn’t fond of feeling either, never mind sounding that way.

Emma’s hands trembled so much she worried she wouldn’t be able to get the stopper off or that she’d drop it, but she tightened her hold as best as she could. She managed to get the vial open and dumped the blue liquid directly on to the burned hand.

Regina hissed as the potion went to work, immediately healing the burn. It was one of the more powerful potions she had and she’d brewed it to be used at a later date, just in case something went wrong in the town again, but she wasn’t going to stand around and let the burn heal on its own. She was certain Emma’s accidental blast had caused a third degree burn on the palm and there would be no easy healing for that in a non-magical setting.

Emma stood staring at the hand as fresh pink skin formed over the enormous red, bubbling welt. She was practically vibrating as she watched the healing process and how the potion didn’t even leave a scar behind, her adrenaline pounding. She glanced down and saw that though the perfectly manicured nails of Regina’s right hand clutched the vial tightly, the whole hand still vibrated with tremors. Emma had never shaken so hard when she’d been scared. It must have been a Regina’s-body thing.

“Are you okay?” she asked, trying to calm herself down.

Regina could still feel heat in the palm of the hand, but it was lessening slowly but surely. She nodded, her jaw still tight and her teeth still gritted.

“No more magic for you,” Regina snapped. “Not until you learn how to control it. I’m sick of being attacked by you because you can’t handle my magic.”

“I held on to it for almost ten minutes!” Emma protested. “You’re the one who can’t do anything with my magic! If you’d been able to use my magic then we could be done and back in our own bodies by now!”

“And if _you_ were able to use _my_ magic you wouldn’t have almost lost your hand!” Regina shot back.

Emma glared at the other woman.

“I did better than you and that pisses you off,” she proclaimed. “Just admit it.”

“I’ll admit it when you can handle my magic without nearly blowing me to pieces,” Regina growled. “That isn’t the problem here though. If I can’t access your magic properly and you can’t fully control mine, we can’t switch back. We’re stuck like this until we find a better way or until we figure out how to deal with each other’s magic.”

The idea that they would be trapped like this didn’t sit well with Regina. Emma was going to learn a lot about Regina’s body and Regina was going to have to deal with the constant desire to explore Emma’s. She wouldn’t—obviously—but the idea of having to navigate certain aspects of life in the body of the woman she liked so much was a bit daunting.

“We’ll figure it out,” Emma said, sounding absurdly confident for someone who had just nearly burned a hand off. “You’re a great teacher. Once you figure out how to use my magic you’ll be great at figuring out how to get us back to normal.”

“And once you learn how to use mine—“

“I think you should focus on learning mine, first,” Emma said, sounding almost apologetic. “I can at least call yours up and hold it for a while. You haven’t been able to do anything with mine.”

Regina glared at the blonde for a moment but she knew she was right. Emma’s magic was nearly impossible for Regina to grab a hold of. She wasn’t that familiar with light magic, so it was hard for her to even think of using it.

“I have meetings today,” Regina informed the blonde. “What do you suggest we do?”

“Cancel them?” Emma asked.

“Not likely,” Regina informed her. “They’re important.”

“What’s so important that these meetings have to happen?”

“They’re about rezoning.”

“That can’t wait?”

“No, because if I wait for those then I can’t approve or deny permits that need to be filed by the end of the week,” Regina answered.

“What the hell are people trying to build that they can’t wait a few days?” Emma asked.

“They’ve been waiting a month to meet with me,” Regina informed the other woman. “The reason it’s taking so long is because I’ve been booked every day for the last five months and before that we were traipsing through the jungle in Neverland hunting for our son.”

Emma whistled lowly.

“How the hell do you find time to do _anything_?” she asked the other woman.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Regina answered dryly. “But I still stand by the fact that I need to attend that meeting. If it has to look like you’re in the room then so be it.”

“So you want me to go in and do what?” Emma asked. “Should I rezone things the way I would want them?”

“Of course not,” Regina said. “I’m going to tell you how I want to rezone things and then when the people we’re meeting with try to barter then you look to me for answers. I’m not going to let you just break up my town all willy-nilly.”

“I’m not going to break it up,” Emma grumbled. “I just figure it’s not that hard. I mean I think I’d be able to improve this place if we’re honest.”

Regina rolled her eyes.

“I know what I want the town to be like, Miss Swan,” she said. “Let’s go. I don’t want to be late and the meeting is in half an hour.”

“Why is it so early?”

“It’s only early because you waste your days,” Regina replied. “Now come on. We’ll work on controlling each other’s magic later.”

Emma got up and followed the other woman up and out of the vault, annoyed with how this was all playing out. She hadn’t expected it to be particularly easy but this was getting ridiculous. Now she had to play Mayor?

“So what are the basics here?” Emma asked as she slid into the passenger seat. “What’s being rezoned?”

“There are a few small houses right at the edge of the downtown area,” Regina explained. “They’ve been bought out by a few residents who are hoping to build a movie theatre.”

“Ooh that’s a good idea!” Emma said excitedly.

“Except for the fact that the town doesn’t exist in a legal sense,” Regina said. “They want to build a movie theatre but we won’t actually be able to get new movies in the town.”

“We won’t?” Emma asked.

“We won’t. Movie theatres have to lease the rights to show a film on one of their screens. If someone here builds a movie theatre and tries to get the rights to show a movie they’ll draw attention to the town. We have a good set up going, one that will be disrupted if outsiders start to sniff around.”

“Outsiders aren’t so bad,” Emma said. “I was an outsider.”

“And you tried to take my son from me,” Regina reminded her, not even glancing over as she drove through the outskirts of town towards the town hall.

“Okay, those were some extenuating circumstances, you have to admit,” Emma said. “This place was cursed and I thought you would end up hurting Henry.”

“That may be true, but you’re not the only outsider who’s made trouble,” Regina reminded her. “I’m not particularly fond of our last guests.”

“Greg and Tamara were pretty awful,” Emma said. “And that’s putting it lightly.”

“I deserve a lot for what I’ve done to everyone,” Regina said, “and especially Greg for what I did to his father—“

“You didn’t deserve that, Regina,” Emma said quickly. “No one deserves that.”

“I did a little,” Regina said. “But I’d prefer to keep outsiders… well, _out_. For a while at least. Maybe until we’re certain we don’t have some enormous magical disaster on the horizon.”

“Fair enough,” Emma said. “So I’m supposed to say no about this movie theatre?”

“You are,” Regina confirmed. “We can rezone that area to commercial space if anyone has any small businesses they’d like to open up, but a movie theatre seems too risky.”

Emma fell silent, lifting her hand to chew her fingernails a little. She was a little amazed by how open Regina had been with her about the torture she’d experienced at the hands of Greg and Tamara but was delighted she’d lowered her walls even for just a few moments.

“Stop chewing my nails,” Regina said impatiently as they pulled into the parking lot. “I swear if you wreck my manicure I’ll—“

“Do what, Regina?” Emma asked. “I’m in your body. If you try to take out any anger on me you’ll just be screwing up your own body.”

Regina huffed.

“You need to stop doing that anyways,” Regina ordered. “You have to act like I do.”

“Like I’ve got a stick up my ass?”

“Like you learned manners as a child and were once a queen,” Regina bit out. “I need you to stand up straight—absolutely no slouching. No chewing my nails. Try to speak the way I do and not with all the slang you speak with. Try to be classy and poised. And don’t look bored.”

“You can’t tell me you don’t look bored during these kinds of meetings,” Emma protested.

“I don’t!” Regina said.

“Regina, I’ve never seen you yawn once _except_ for when you’re in meetings like that,” Emma pointed out.

“Well pretend I’ve had my coffee and I’m absolutely thrilled to be talking about zoning laws and city planning,” Regina shot back. “I need to seem like myself.”

“Then you have to act like me,” Emma decided. “No insulting people without a good reason, no pursing your lips, no hands on your hips. Oh and don’t do that thing where you hold your stomach.”

“What thing?” Regina asked confused.

“Sometimes when you’re standing you press one of your hands to your stomach,” Emma explained. “It’s kinda like what pregnant women do except obviously you’re not pregnant.”

“Do I really do that?” Regina asked curiously.

“Yeah, sometimes,” Emma said. “It’s just some weird thing I noticed.”

“Hm.”

Regina hadn’t realized she did things like that. The fact that Emma had noticed it intrigued the mayor to no end. Did Emma watch her? Or did she just do it often enough that everyone had seen her do it?

She set that aside to think about later.

“All right, let’s go,” Regina said. “I want to get this over with so I can practice with your magic and we can go back to how things were.”

Emma nodded and climbed out of the Mercedes, grabbing Regina’s purse. Regina took a deep breath as the two of them walked up to the town hall, hoping this would go well and wouldn’t blow up in their faces.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: none
> 
> Meant to post yesterday but I've been having a grand old time with my dear friend Depression and I hadn't quite shaken it. I'm hoping it won't affect the posting schedule again but I'm working on the next chapter and hoping I have time for it this week to post it on Saturday.

Emma did her best to sweep into the town hall and the mayor’s office like she really was Regina, like she belonged there. She was beyond worried she would screw up and someone would figure out what was going on—she didn’t want to blow their cover if Regina didn’t want anyone to know. Not only would Regina be pissed that she couldn’t follow directions properly (which she knew was what Regina would say about it) but there was always a small part of Emma that wanted to please her.

The sound of heels clicking on the ground gave Emma a small boost of confidence, but she realized suddenly that Regina was clomping around in the boots she’d pulled on. Emma paused before she reached Regina’s desk and turned to look at the other woman. Regina was attempting to walk with a strange swagger, her shoulders slumped forward.

“What are you doing?” Emma asked.

“Trying to walk the way you do.”

“Okay, I don’t walk like that.”

“But you don’t walk the way I do,” Regina said. “If I don’t focus on walking then I’ll just end up doing it the way I always do and people are bound to notice.”

“Well yeah but I don’t walk like a surly teenager,” Emma said. “Just… I dunno, don’t walk like you’ve got a yardstick taped to your spine.”

“That’s actually almost exactly how I developed the posture I did,” Regina said.

“I know, my mom told me that’s what they did in the Enchanted Forest,” Emma admitted. “I was slouching at the table and she told me all about that mess.”

“That mess is the reason I’m able to command so much attention and respect,” Regina said. “There’s a lot to be said about good posture.”

“Whatever,” Emma said. “So do I just sit at your desk and let them come to me?”

“No, it’ll be at the meeting table,” Regina said, gesturing to the table to the side of the room. “I have maps of the town and how the zoning is laid out now so it’ll be easier for everyone to see on the table.”

Regina went to a file cabinet and went through it, pulling out a large, folded up map. She settled it on the table, unfolding it and finding paper weights to hold down the edges. That done, she found all sorts of paperwork Emma didn’t even want to know about. How Regina kept track of it all was beyond Emma.

“Would you like to come over and see what you’ll be talking about?” Regina asked. It didn’t sound like a demand for once but Emma got up anyways and headed over. Regina gestured to the area in question. “The block that they’re looking to renovate is here. Theoretically the houses could be converted to shops or demolished and new ones could be built. We could use some new restaurants so feel free to suggest that. The movie theatre isn’t possible but we could use some spice in the town, something new to look forward to.”

Emma nodded, listening carefully and keeping track of the areas Regina pointed out. She wanted to do well with this.

There was a knock at the door and both women looked up.

“Ready?” Regina asked.

“As I’ll ever be,” Emma replied with a shrug.

“Not good enough.”

“It’s what we’ve got.”

Regina frowned but gestured for Emma to get on with it. Emma took a breath and when she started to walk to the door Regina gave a little cough. Emma stopped and looked at the other woman, her brow furrowed. Regina pointed to the desk and Emma couldn’t help being more confused.

“Sit down in the chair and tell them to come in,” Regina hissed. “I _never_ get the door.”

“Mayor Mills?” a voice called through the door as the person on the other side knocked again.

Emma scrambled to get into the chair. Once there, she glanced at Regina, straightened up as best as she could, and pretended to be busy with some paperwork.

“Come in,” she called, trying to sound impatient and already done with what was going on.

The door opened slowly and Emma did her best to keep her head down as she continued to pretend to work on whatever the hell it was she was looking at.

“Mayor Mills, thank you for meeting with us today,” the man at the head of the group said. He caught sight of Regina and smiled a little pleasantly. “Sheriff Swan.”

Regina smiled, trying to look as natural as possible. She had her hands in her back pockets and tried to appear relaxed, but it was hard when she was forcing the relaxation. She figured as long as she wasn’t shaking like she normally did when she was stressed it would be fine.

“Hey,” she said. “Regina—Mayor Mills—said I could sit in on this today. I’ll have to know so I can be sure no one works without a proper permit.”

The man nodded eagerly with a smile.

“We don’t mind, right guys?” he asked the three other men with him.

Emma for her part did a good job looking annoyed that they weren’t paying attention to the mayor, and she stood, immediately commanding everyone’s attention. Regina was impressed. The way Emma stood and stalked to the table was pretty convincing.

“Let’s get to it, shall we?” Emma suggested coolly. “I don’t want to waste my whole day on this.”

Regina nearly laughed. That was exactly how she’d have responded, she was sure of it. Emma had clearly done her homework—which made Regina wonder how often the blonde paid such close attention.

The four men scrambled over to the table and began making their case. Regina feigned interest in what they had to say but with Emma taking the reins and putting on a good show Regina didn’t think she really had to do much here. It was so rare she got to take a back seat and relax when she was in this office. She let herself zone out on occasion, usually just when the men were speaking, but when Emma spoke Regina tried to check in to make sure she was doing it all correctly.

“We can’t put in a movie theatre,” Emma was saying when Regina tuned back in. “We wouldn’t be able to lease new movies to put on the shows or people would ask questions about the town and where it came from. I can rezone it to commercialize the area but a movie theatre is out of the question.”

“Do they have to be new movies?” the leader of the group asked. “Theoretically we could just do old movies. Ones that have gone to the public domain?”

“Oh?” Emma asked, perking up a little bit. Regina shot her a look but was ignored. “What do you mean?”

“Well if the problem is leasing new movies and attracting attention to the town, what if we just get a hold of movies that don’t need to be leased?” the man offered.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Emma said. She sounded too eager now.

Regina cleared her throat pointedly and Emma finally looked at her. Regina met the chocolate brown eyes and tried to hide the warning she sent Emma from the men, but Emma looked at her almost excitedly.

“I’ll have to think on it,” Emma told the men, sounding uncertain. Regina could have winced—she made it a point to never sound uncertain of anything.

“We have to get this agreement in today and the permit applications in soon,” the man said hopefully. “Maybe you could just think on it for a minute and tell us after that minute’s up?”

Emma realized that Regina was getting annoyed with her bending to these people and the movie theatre idea, and she closed up a bit again.

“I said I’d think on it,” Emma said curtly. “If you would give me a few seconds of silence maybe I could do so.”

“Sorry, Madam Mayor.”

“As you should be.”

Regina felt a bolt of relief with Emma getting back on track.

Emma crossed her arms and brought one hand up towards her face. Regina was certain that she was going to chew on her nails but she seemed to think better of it at the last second. Instead, Emma pursed her lips, tapping them lightly with one finger. Regina was certain she’d never done anything like that but it didn’t seem entirely out of character for her.

“If we go with movies in the public domain we’d be able to keep other people out,” Emma said thoughtfully. “And it would be good to get something new in town. People would be able to spend money on something which would be good for local economy.”

“Plus we could show kids movies on occasion,” the leader of the little group offered. “Your son might like it. You could take him.”

Emma’s gaze traveled to Regina’s face, one eyebrow quirked.

“What do you think, Sheriff?” Emma asked. “Would Henry like that?”

“He’s always loved movies,” Regina replied with a shrug, doing her best to act as Emma would. “Taking him to one in a theater could be fun. As long as the town doesn’t attract attention I don’t think it’s a bad idea.”

Regina could see in the other woman’s eyes that the idea delighted her, and the fact that Regina was clearly signing up to be on board was a relief to Emma. Regina had a feeling that Emma hadn’t wanted to turn these people down.

“Let’s look into this a bit,” Emma said, turning her attention to the map on the table.

The next half hour flew by and by the end of it Regina was actually pretty impressed. She hadn’t realized just how observant her friend was, but if she hadn’t known any better Regina would have thought that it was actually her in her own body.

“Thank you so much, Mayor Mills,” the man said, beaming at Emma. “We’ll have the permit applications turned in by the end of the day.”

“And I’ll have them back to you as soon as possible,” Emma replied coolly. “If that’s all? I have another meeting I need to prepare for.”

“Of course, Mayor Mills,” the man said. “Come on guys.”

He gestured for his little group of friends to follow him and they all headed out.

“Color me impressed, Swan,” Regina said dryly as the door shut behind the group. “You’re a good actress.”

“I just tried to act like I had a stick up my ass,” Emma shot back, heading to the mayor’s chair and slumping down into it.

“Well you did it well,” Regina said. “How often to you watch me that you were able to do that?”

“What?” Emma asked. “I don’t watch you.”

“Sure you don’t,” Regina said with a laugh. “Before this started you told me a number of quirks that even I don’t notice I have. During that meeting you kept a level head and managed to respond to everything exactly how I would have. You watch me. Admit it.”

“No, I don’t,” Emma said, but she wasn’t meeting Regina’s gaze.

“Yes, you do,” the real mayor insisted. “Which I’ll be sure to remember when we get back into our own bodies.”

“Whatever,” Emma said with a roll of her eyes. “Can we go now or do I have to sit through more meetings?”

“I have a meeting after lunch but I’m going to cancel it,” Regina said. “And I’m thinking that I need to clear my schedule until we get this done. You did well with that, but I don’t think people will take me very seriously if I constantly have you sitting in on meetings.”

“Wait, shit, what about my job?” Emma asked.

“What about it?” Regina asked. “Your father can handle things, can’t he?”

“I mean he can, but I’m the sheriff,” Emma said. “I can’t just totally abandon my duties.”

“Well I can’t very well fight crime,” Regina replied. “I’m sure I’d be physically capable of all the running and muscling people about considering it’s still your body but I don’t know that I’d know what to do.”

“We’ll have to figure something out then,” Emma said.

“Let’s go,” Regina said. “We need to work on mastering each other’s magic. Or at least being able to control it enough to light a single candle together so we can switch back.”

“Such lofty ambitions,” Emma teased lightly as they headed out. She could have sworn she saw a flicker of a smile from the other woman but Regina went straight back to business.

“How do you get mine?” Regina asked. “What do you do that makes it easier?”

“I dunno, I just… do it,” Emma said. “It’s just right there. Isn’t mine?”

“Yours is right there, but I can’t keep hold of it,” Regina said. “I can find it but the moment I do it starts to pull away.”

“What do you think the reason is?”

“I can’t be sure,” Regina said, “but if I had to guess… I would say it has something to do with the state of our magic. Mine has had decades to mature and find control, but yours is new to you. It must still be flighty.”

Emma arched a brow as they neared the Mercedes. She never had trouble with using her magic—not anymore at least. Her frequent lessons with Regina had actually made her pretty good at it.

“Well, we’ll get it eventually,” Emma said, slipping into the passenger side of the Mercedes without a fuss.

Regina made a noise of agreement.

They were about halfway home when Emma’s phone rang. Without thinking, Emma reached for it and answered it.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Mom?” Henry’s voice asked, clearly bewildered.

“Yeah, it’s me, kid,” Emma answered, confused by his reaction.

She saw Regina waving a hand and glanced over at the other woman, realizing with a jolt that she’d just answered her own phone from Regina’s body as Henry started in with the questions.

“Are you okay? Is Emma okay? What are you doing with her phone? Why are you talking funny?”

“I’m not talking funny,” Emma protested, scrambling to find a way to fix what she’d done. “If you’ve called me to insult me I’ll happily start thinking about taking your Gameboy.”

“It’s a 3DS, Mom,” Henry said. “No one calls it a Gameboy. And I’m sorry, you just… caught me off guard with the way you were speaking. Is Mom okay though? Why do you have her phone?”

“Your other mother is driving,” Emma answered. “We stepped out for lunch after I had a meeting.”

“I thought she was going over for a magic lesson?” Henry said pointedly.

Emma shot an imploring look at Regina and Regina held out her hand. Once the phone was passed over, Regina began speaking.

“Hey, kid,” Regina said, using the term of endearment she loathed hearing Emma use all the time. “I went over to your mom’s for a magic lesson but she had a meeting at the town hall I thought I should tag along for. I’m driving her to pick up lunch and then we’ll be headed back to the mansion.”

“Can I get lunch with you guys?” he asked, easily accepting what he’d been told when it had been spelled out like that. “Grandma and Grampa haven’t given me lunch yet.”

“They haven’t?” Regina asked.

“They weren’t sure when you’d be back and wanted to wait to see if you’d want lunch, too,” Henry answered. “So can I come?”

Regina hesitated a moment before saying, “Sure. We’ll pick you up in a few minutes. Be ready to go.”

“Thanks!” Henry said eagerly.

They said their goodbyes and Regina hung up, passing the phone back to Emma.

“So I kinda forgot I was in your body,” Emma said sheepishly.

“I could tell,” Regina shot back. “You’d better not forget again though. We’re having lunch with him.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea?” Emma asked.

“No, but your parents haven’t fed him yet, and I’m sure if I let them feed him he’ll have some kind of fried food.”

“They feed him well,” Emma protested.

“I feed him better.”

Emma rolled her eyes and turned away, looking out the window. She had a feeling half of the reason was because Regina could never say no to Henry. Part of it was because she always wanted to spoil their son, but another part of it was because she was desperate to make up for all the wrong she’d done him. Emma had never brought it up or pointed it out, but the mayor was very clearly aware of how she had hurt Henry in the past and was always worried she’d done irrevocable damage to their relationship. Admittedly there was a lot Regina needed to make up for, but Emma wasn’t sure she’d do so just by giving in to his every demand.

“So we’re just going to pretend that we’re each other for a whole lunch with him,” Emma said.

“It should be easy enough,” Regina excused as she drove towards the Charmings’ apartment. “We made it through that meeting with no problem.”

“He’s going to figure it out.”

“No he won’t.”

“He knows us, Regina. He’s not stupid.”

“I know he isn’t, but we’re not going to clue him in.”

Emma had a feeling that Henry would easily see right through their attempts, but Regina wasn’t going to back down. Whatever happened, at least she’d most likely be entertained watching Regina try to pretend to be her again.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: brief mentions of Emma's incarceration/the birth of Henry, more angst and fighting.
> 
> Bit of a beast of a chapter. I've been writing it on my phone so I don't realize how long it is until I pop it into Word. That being said, it's a bit meaty with feelings and angst! Hope you enjoy it!

When they arrived at the apartment, Henry was visible in the window for a moment before he bolted. He clearly said hurried goodbyes to his grandparents as he appeared at the door moments later, bag on his back and looking excited as anything. He paused when he got close to the car and Emma got out.

“What’s wrong, Henry?” she asked, hyper aware she had to pretend she was Regina.

“What are you doing letting Mom drive your Mercedes?” he asked. “I thought you said you’d never let her drive it.”

“Maybe I’ve decided your mother is more trustworthy than I thought.”

“You said that you’d let her drive it over your dead body,” he said. “And that if you ever even thought of letting her drive it I should bring you to Whale because the only excuse will be that you have a head injury or need to be locked up in psych.”

Emma resisted the urge to turn around and demand that Regina apologize for her lack of faith.

“I had a change of heart,” she said. “Now are you coming or not?”

“There’s only two seats,” he pointed out. “Am I supposed to sit on the gear shift?”

“We’ll squeeze in,” Emma said. “It’s only a five minute drive.”

“Is it safe to drive like that?” Henry asked.

It was times like then that Emma could really see Regina shining through. She’d clearly drilled every kind of safety rule into their son, especially after getting him back from Pan.

“We’ll be fine,” Emma said. “You can sit in my lap.”

His face turned red in seconds.

“Can I sit in the trunk?”

“What?”

“Or can we poof there? I don’t want to sit in your lap.”

“It’s a five minute drive, Henry,” Emma said, starting to really get sick of the argument. “Just sit on my lap and we’ll be there in no time. We don’t need to poof everywhere.”

“I’m not a kid anymore—“

“Henry Daniel Mills, let your mother into the car and sit in her lap or I’m leaving _both_ of you to walk to Mifflin Street,” Regina barked from inside the car.

Emma winced, realizing that Regina’s tone and way of speaking definitely didn’t sound like the Savior, but it had the desired effect. When Emma climbed into the Mercedes, Henry stuffed his bag in the trunk and hesitantly settled in his mother’s lap. He looked miserable as Emma pulled the seatbelt across the both of them.

“Five minutes, I promise,” Emma said.

“Whatever,” Henry grumbled.

Regina seemed to recognize how miserable her son was because she gunned it, making it back to 108 Mifflin in no time at all. Almost the moment they pulled in the driveway, Henry was unbuckling and nearly lunging out of the car.

“As if that was the worst thing in the world,” Emma grumbled as she got out, smoothing out her clothes in what looked like a reflexive action but Regina knew was just her acting the way she thought Regina would.

“I still can’t believe you let Mom drive,” Henry admitted.

“I did a fantastic job of driving,” Regina said.

“You were over the speed limit,” he pointed out. “ _And_ you forgot your blinker a few times like you always do even though I remind you all the time you have to use it.”

Regina had thrown all that in specifically to ensure she seemed like Emma while driving. Henry talked about it enough that Regina had even confronted the sheriff on a few occasions about how her driving needed improvements.

“Well who’s gonna arrest me?” Regina shot back. “I’m the sheriff.”

Henry grinned.

“True,” he said easily. He turned to Emma. “Is Mom staying with us for lunch?”

“She is,” Emma said. “Your mother and I thought it might be nice to have a family meal, just the three of us.”

Henry lit up at that thought and nodded eagerly.

“What are we having?” he asked.

“I was going to ask you,” Emma replied, knowing that Regina would definitely have wanted to keep her little prince happy and so would have let him choose. “What are you in the mood for?”

“Your chicken alfredo?” he asked hopefully. “I know you said we would have it for dinner tonight but maybe we could have it for lunch this time?”

“Of course, k—Henry,” Emma said, managing to remember not to call him ‘kid’ at the last second. “Why don’t you go play some of your video games while I try to teach your mother how to cook you something other than a grilled cheese?”

Regina was impressed with the way Emma had managed to get Henry to leave and give them an excuse to be in the kitchen together. Their son eagerly nodded and raced off, seeming over the moon excited that his apparent adoptive mother wasn’t just letting him play video games but _encouraging_ him to do so.

“Well played, Swan,” Regina said, sounding legitimately impressed.

“Had to get him out of our hair while you cook,” Emma shot back.

“Do you really not know how to make chicken alfredo?” Regina asked.

“I know how to do it but I don’t know how _you_ do it. I figured he would be less suspicious if you were in there making it than if I made my own and it was super different.”

“I don’t see how our recipes could be vastly different, but I’ll concede and take over cooking,” Regina said, leading Emma towards the door.

When they got inside, Henry was already sitting in the living room in front of the TV, the sounds of his console starting up blaring to life.

“Turn it down, Henry,” Emma called, sounding exactly like Regina would have and further impressing the woman inhabiting her own body.

“Sorry, Mom!” Henry said over his shoulder as he scrambled for a remote.

Regina led the way to the kitchen and went to the fridge, glad she’d pulled the chicken out of the freezer that morning instead of waiting to defrost it until later. She set about getting out the ingredients they would need.

“So what are we doing?” Emma asked, leaning back against the counter as Regina worked. She watched the other woman carefully, actually interested in learning how Regina made the dish.

“What do you mean?”

“From here on out while we’re like this,” Emma said. “Are we just going to go through the motions? Because I feel like at some point we should tell people so we don’t get screwed over.”

“I really don’t want to tell anyone,” Regina said. “We’ll just stick together and do our best to gain control over our magics so that we can switch back.”

“Seriously Regina, why don’t you want to tell anyone?” Emma asked. “It’s not like weird shit doesn’t go down in this town all the time.”

“I know, but I don’t want anyone knowing I got stuck like this,” Regina shot back.

“I’m in shape and I’m pretty good looking,” Emma said. “People think I’m attractive. It’s not the worst thing being in my body.”

“You’re very attractive,” Regina said before she could stop herself. She hurried on with, “But it’s not having your looks that I’m worried about. I don’t want people thinking I can’t handle something like this.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’m the Evil Queen,” Regina said. “Magic has always been a huge part of who I am. The fact that I got put in this situation—while not entirely my fault—and my inability to get myself out of this situation reflects poorly on me.”

“People will understand it was a mistake,” Emma pointed out.

“But it wasn’t so long ago I needed to be rescued from something else,” Regina said a bit stiffly. “I don’t want people thinking I can’t protect myself or solve my own problems.”

“What, do you mean Greg and Tamara?” Emma asked. “Everyone knows how screwed over you got with that whole thing. No one thinks any less of you for what happened to you.”

“I wasn’t innocent in getting myself into that situation,” Regina admitted, her eyes on the meal she was preparing instead of on the other woman. “But… I don’t want people thinking that I can’t take care of myself. If they all know that I couldn’t switch us back—“

“They’ll understand, Regina,” Emma said emphatically.

“They’ll see it as a weakness,” Regina said certainly. “They want to see my weaknesses in any case. You may have started trusting me more lately but that doesn’t mean that a single one of them has.”

“They have to have seen what you’ve done for all of us,” Emma protested.

“All I’ve done is take back the power they’ve hated me for having for so long,” Regina pointed out.

“But my mother didn’t want to be mayor,” Emma said. “She couldn’t handle it and didn’t want to ruin the town. We all know that you’re the only one really cut out for the job so we let you have it. It’s not like you wrestled power away from someone else. You were given it.”

“Your reassurance with my abilities aside, they all still see me as the Evil Queen and would all love to see me fail at something,” Regina said. “Me being unable to fix our problem here would delight everyone and that’s not something I want to deal with.”

Emma wondered once more how Regina managed to get by with such an absurd amount of pride but didn’t question it out loud. She wouldn’t be the one to expose Regina’s weakness in this respect if Regina was really that opposed to it.

“Fine,” she said, clearly giving up. “Fine, we’ll do it that way then.”

“Thank you,” Regina said, her eyes still averted from the blonde. “Besides that, we can work together as much as possible to make sure we get each other’s powers under control. Once we do that we’ll be all set. It shouldn’t’ take long considering how good we both are with our own magic.”

“Since when do you give me so many compliments?” Emma asked delightedly. “First you say I’m not a hideous mutation, then you actually admit I’m good looking, now you’re saying I’m good with magic? A girl could get used to this.”

Regina rolled her eyes dramatically even as she looked at what she was doing with the meal.

“I give compliments where compliments are due,” she said.

“No you don’t,” Emma retorted. “The only one who gets that kind of treatment from you is Henry. Of course, the amount of good things you have to say about him more than makes up for the lack of good things you say about almost anyone else.”

“We have an amazing son and I want him to know he’s amazing,” Regina said.

“That’s all thanks to you,” Emma said with a wry smile. At the questioning look she added, “You did a good job with him. He’s a great kid and it’s all because of you.”

Emma was amazed by the look of surprise on the other woman’s face at that. Regina’s eyebrows nearly flew into the blonde hair and she blinked a few times as she shot a quick glance at Emma before looking back down at the food. It was as if she was checking to see if Emma was making fun of her or tricking her in some way.

“What?” Emma asked. “You did. He’s healthy, super happy, smart as hell, has great manners... Honestly, he makes me wonder if there’s more to nurture than nature.”

“He has plenty of you in him, Miss Swan,” Regina said, and Emma couldn’t help wondering if she was intentionally diverting the attention away from herself. “He’s stubborn as anything and intolerably _good_.”

Emma laughed.

“That can’t be the worst thing to have your kid be,” Emma said and was glad when Regina cracked a smile.

“It isn’t,” she admitted. “Other than the time when you and he were conspiring to break the curse he’s always been the sweetest and most wonderful boy. He never told a lie and the only time he talked back was during ‘Operation Cobra’ was when he was a very willful toddler. He’s definitely the Savior’s son.”

Emma smiled widely at that.

“That streak of goodness in him brought me here to my family so I can’t complain,” she said.

“I easily could considering how you arrived and how he was acting towards me,” Regina said.

“You have to admit that he had a point in what he was doing and saying,” Emma tried to say reasonably.

“You’ve never had the child you raised from infancy and love with all your heart tell you that you aren’t his mother and that he hates you,” Regina shot back. She had finished preparing the meal and had it all set to cook, so she had nothing else to do to help her avoid Emma’s gaze.

“I never got to raise him at all,” the blonde pointed out. “And sure, he’d probably be really different if I had but I didn’t even get the chance to.”

“You had the chance,” Regina reminded her. “They gave you the option to keep him. You chose not to.”

“And I hate that I made that choice every single time I think about it.”

Regina’s brow rose just a little.

“What?” Emma asked. “You can’t honestly think that I was thrilled to give up a baby. Especially considering why I felt like I had to.”

“I never thought about it,” Regina replied honestly.

‘Exactly,” the other woman said. “But imagine being eighteen, freshly dumped, incarcerated for a crime you didn’t commit, and about to give birth. If you can honestly tell met hat you would keep the baby in those circumstances then I’ll be amazed.”

“There are programs in place for women in that position—“

“I was handcuffed to the bed and a CO was watching me when I had him.”

The two women fell silent as Regina stared at the woman inhabiting her body, shocked by the news. She had always known that Emma had given birth to their son in less than ideal circumstances but she had never known just how terrible it had been. Regina didn’t even want to imagine being in that position.

“I didn’t think he’d have a good shot with me so I had to give him up. If I’d been in any other situation I would have kept him.”

After a long moment Regina nodded slowly.

He’d have been just as amazing with you as he is right now,” she said. “But I can’t deny t hat I’m glad you felt you had to give him up. He’s…”

“Everything to you,” Emma supplied.

“Exactly.”

They stared at each other, not thinking at all about the oddness of staring at another woman in their own body for the first time since they’d switched. All they could think of was how different everything could have been, their minds whirling with ‘what ifs’ and ‘if onlys’.

“We should find more for you,” Emma said after a moment.

“What?”

“More than Henry,” Emma said. “Something more for you than just work and Henry. You don’t do anything else, do you?” Even though it was a question it wasn’t intoned like one—it was more of a statement.

“I’m perfectly content with my life—“

“Content,” Emma said before Regina could continue. “Shouldn’t you be _happy_.”

“You’re just trying to get even more time with him than you already have,” Regina said, instantly on the defensive.

“Regina, no, that’s not—“

“Mom?”

Both women froze when Henry’s voice rang out from the living room.

“Which one of us are you asking for?” Emma asked.

“Other mother,” Henry said, and they could hear the smile in his voice. Despite that, Regina frowned. She may have been in Emma’s body but he was looking for the _real_ Emma, not his adoptive mother.

“What’s up, kid?” Regina asked, trying to pretend she didn’t mind he never seemed to ask for her anymore.

He appeared in the doorway and she put on a smile.

“Can you come play against me?” he asked. “I’ve beaten this game so many times it’s boring. I need a challenge.”

“And that’s me?” Regina asked, quirking a blonde brow.

“Yeah, you’re better than anyone I know at this game,” he said.

“I could play,” Emma offered, knowing that if Regina tried playing she’d be soundly defeated and that there was no way they could pretend she was Emma.

"Thanks Mom, but... Emma's just better at Mario Kart than you are," Henry said. "Like I said I want a challenge. Whenever you and I have played together you've been fun but..."

Regina frowned at that, unable to hide that she was annoyed finding out she was yet again unable to compare to the woman who's body she inhabited in her son's eyes. 

"You never know, I could stay up at night playing this while you sleep, working on figuring out how to beat all of your high scores," Emma said. 

Henry's brow furrowed for a moment and he looked at who he thought was his adoptive mother for a few moments before letting out a slight chuckle. 

"Good one, Mom," he said. "You read after you put me to bed though."

"And you know this how?" Regina asked, one brow raised. 

A mix of surprise and sheepishness crossed Henry's face and he shifted from foot to foot, realizing what he'd said. 

"Sometimes I have to go to the bathroom at night and I notice Mom's light is on," he said, clearly lying as fast as he could. 

"Sure," Regina said skeptically. "Regardless, your mom might be better at Mario Kart than you might think."

Henry looked between them curiously before nodding. 

"Fine," he said. "Let's do this!"

Emma shot Regina a small smile and followed Henry into the living room. Regina knew she was about to get major points in Henry's books but wished it were actually _her_ earning those points. At the end of the day it would still be Emma playing against Henry and once more Regina would be less exciting, especially once it all came out. 

Regina busied herself in the kitchen, taking the time to tidy up and get started on the dishes she'd used in cooking before they piled up for too long. She listened to Henry and Emma as they played, hearing the amazement in her son's voice as he exclaimed about how good his mother actually was at the game. 

"It's crazy," he said. "Are you serious that you actually play after I've gone to bed?"

"Sometimes I do," Emma said as her brow furrowed in concentration. "They're fun. Some are actually pretty good. Ha!" She couldn't help the exclamation when she hit Henry with a red shell. "Gotcha!"

Henry let out a cry of surprise as Mario and his car flipped and he went from first place to second. Luigi shot past him and Henry's eyes narrowed. 

"Oh it's on!" Henry said.

"Catch me if you can!" Emma said gloatingly, steering her cart into a secret shortcut. 

It was odd listening to her own voice talking to Henry but Regina just focused on what she was doing. After a while the food was ready and Regina called to the other two.

"Can you set the table?" she asked idly. 

Henry and Emma obediently went to get plates, forks, knives, and glasses to set out as Regina set the food into a serving dish. By the time she carried it out the other two had everything all set. 

Regina shot a meaningful glance at Emma and at the seat at the head of the table. The other woman caught the meaning and settled down at the head while Henry sat on her right side and Regina sat to the left. 

"It smells great," Henry said excitedly. 

"It really does," Regina said, shooting a smile at Emma. "Thanks for showing me how to do it."

"Of course, dear," Emma said with a smile back. 

"Can you guys cut it out?" Henry asked with a laugh. 

"What do you mean?" Regina asked in confusion. "I'm just thanking your mom for teaching--"

"I'm not stupid, Mom," Henry said. "I know something happened." 

Silence fell between the two women as they stared at their son, shocked by his completely correct accusation. Henry just looked endlessly delighted and amused, waiting for an explanation or excuse. 

"What do you think is going on?" Emma asked him slowly. 

"I don't know for sure," Henry said slowly, "but I think you switched somehow." 

"Told you he'd figure it out," Emma said with a grin at Regina. 

"Why would you think that?" Regina asked, shooting a glare back at Emma. 

"Well, the fact that you're both terrible at keeping what you call me straight," he said. "I've never been called by my full name by anyone but Mom, but Emma called me that. And Emma's the only one who calls me 'kid', so hearing that from Mom's body was a big one. Neither of you is acting super normal and you seem a bit... forced, I guess? And then 'Mom'," he said as he used air quotes when referring to the woman in the Mayor's body, "chose Luigi."

"What does that have to do with anything?" Emma asked. 

"Because, the only times I've ever played with Mom she chose Daisy because she loved her dress," Henry said. "She never chose anyone else. And you always pick Luigi, so I knew it was you. Plus when you went down the shortcut I knew it had to be you. You go that way all the time."

Emma and Regina traded glances, Emma looking a little smug for being right and Regina looking amazed. 

"Am I right?" Henry pressed. 

Regina sighed and nodded. "You are," she said. "Yesterday when I was teaching Emma magic she read a spell and it switched our minds somehow. We woke up in each other's bodies."

"That's why everything was so weird this morning," he said. "Because you woke up at grandma and grampa's and were acting really strange."

"Yes," Regina said. "I was surprised by the wake up I got and hurried out to find your other mother to try to switch back."

"Why haven't you yet?" Henry asked. 

"We're both having trouble working the other's magic," Emma told him. "Our magics are so different it's hard to be able to use them, but the book says that we have to read the spell and then use magic together. We just have to practice it a bit more. Shouldn't take too long."

"Why didn't you just tell everyone?" Henry asked. 

Regina started to answer but Emma beat her to the punch. 

"Can you imagine how long I'd be hearing about this?" she asked pointedly. "I know I'm new to all of this magic stuff but this is ridiculous even for me. I was a little embarrassed."

Henry grinned. 

"I guess that's fair," he said. "So does this mean I have to keep it a secret, too?"

"I'd appreciate it, kid," Emma said emphatically. 

Regina was flooded with gratitude over what Emma had just done for her. She would have explained her own reasonings but it seemed that Emma wanted to keep her from feeling inept even in front of their son. 

A sudden surge of affection for the Sheriff caught Regina off guard. She knew that Emma was the type to be kind to anyone, to try to make them happy, but something like taking the full extent of the blame for the whole situation was such a downright _nice_ thing that Regina had a difficult time swallowing it. She wasn't exactly used to that kind of thing no matter how much the Charmings tried to make her feel like they accepted her. 

Emma was a different story though. Emma knew as much as anyone else but still fought for her in ways she didn't ever expect. Emma had every reason to hate her considering what she'd done to her and she never did. Out of everyone in Storybrooke, Regina always felt worst for the hand she had dealt Emma, causing her to be thrown to a cold world with no family, no friends, and no idea who or what she truly was had to have been the most evil thing Regina had ever done.

With that in mind, Regina shoved down the fondness and desire she felt springing up in her, reminding herself that even if Emma wasn't happily with Hook, there was no way she would ever consider the woman who had attacked an entire realm for a mistake a ten year old had made. 

"So what's gonna happen next?" Henry asked. "Are you just going to try to be each other until you switch back?"

"That's exactly what we're doing," Emma said. 

"But what about everyone else?" he asked. "If we're keeping it a secret then what are we doing about grandma and grampa? Or Killian?"

"We'll work as hard as we can to get it done as soon as possible," Regina said. "I thought it might be best to have Emma stay the night here until we do."

"What?" Emma asked in surprise. 

"This is the Mayor's house and you're inhabiting the Mayor's body," Regina pointed out. 

"Yeah but my parents and Killian--"

"Can survive without you for a few days," Regina said abruptly. "I'll come up with some excuse about Henry to stay here for a little while without raising suspicion."

"Killian--"

"I'm not going near him again, Miss Swan," Regina said firmly. "And you're not going to use my body to be near him either. When you're back in this body you can spend as much time as you like with him but I prefer to keep my distance."

"Wait," Henry said, his nose wrinkling. "He kissed you this morning. When you left grandma and grampa's. Killian kissed you goodbye."

"Don't remind me," Regina said, but she was pleased to see that Henry looked as disgusted as she had felt. She caught Emma's exasperated look and sighed. "He didn't know I wasn't Emma though," she added fairly. 

"I'll make him apologize when it's all fixed," Henry vowed. 

"I'd rather he not know about the situation at all," Regina said, surprised but delighted by her son's protective streak. 

"But he can't just--"

"Does everyone in this house hate my boyfriend?" Emma asked suddenly. Regina and Henry turned to look at Emma with looks that so closely resembled each other that Emma was a little amazed by how much her son had taken after her. Even with Regina controlling her facial muscles, the looks of confusion and shock were the same in her own face as they were in Henry's. It seemed Regina had a point about there being a lot of Emma in their son. 

"Regina won't go near him even innocently and Henry... you're acting like he attacked her," Emma said. "Do you both not like him that much?"

Regina wisely stayed silent, knowing her feelings on the matter were already known, but Henry answered. 

"I don't like people going after my Mom," he said defensively. 

"He thought she was me."

"Yeah but he should have realized something was up. It took me less than half an hour to figure this out. He didn't realize 'you' weren't right at all and just complained about you dropping him for Mom again."

Regina resisted the urge to ask what 'again' meant. 

"He just didn't know," Emma said. "He's not a monster, Henry."

"Yeah but he's also not good enough for you," Henry said decisively. 

Emma stared between the two of them. Regina was staring intently at her plate but Henry looked Emma directly in the eye as if daring her to fight him on it. 

"I'm not hungry anymore," she said, shoving her chair back from the table. She delighted just a little in the wince the sound of the chair legs scraping on the hardwood floors brought out of Regina as she grabbed her plate and brought it to drop into the sink. She didn't hear anything from either of the Mills people and was glad she didn't. 

Emma made it halfway to the door before realizing that going home wasn't exactly an option. If Regina wanted this to be kept a secret, Emma would keep it a secret, but that meant she couldn't storm off and head home in a huff.

She turned and stalked up the stairs, going for the guest room. She nearly tripped on the landing on her way up and angrily kicked off the sky-high heels Regina had forced her to wear. She left them on the stairs out of spite. 

"I'm gonna get out of this stupid outfit," she grumbled. "And I'm gonna wear _jeans_ for the next few days, just to piss her off."

The thought of jeans made Emma think about just how good Regina's ass would look in denim and she cursed under her breath as she made it to the guest room. She reached behind her to unzip the dress but stopped and just flopped down on the bed. Regina didn't want her seeing anything. Regina didn't trust her with her body. 

That thought annoyed the shit out of Emma. After everything they'd been through Regina didn't trust her. What kind of garbage was that? Emma was the one who'd really pushed for Regina to be included in the world after the curse broke, the one who believed in her attempts to be a better person, and Regina didn't trust her. 

She sighed heavily and turned on to her side, glaring at the wall. 

Considering her train of thought she should have expected to hear the sound of feet on the stairs. The footsteps certainly weren't Henry's. 

"You don't have to babysit me," Emma said dryly as she saw her own face poke into the doorframe. 

"I'm not--"

"You're making sure I don't fuck around with you," Emma said, sitting up on the bed. "I'm not stupid, Regina."

Regina at least had the decency to look a little ashamed. 

"Like I said, I don't want you being alone with me," she said. "I don't like the idea of me being out in the world where I can't control myself."

"Well I can control myself in your body," Emma said. She sometimes wished she didn't have to, but she could. "I promised you I'm not going to screw around, didn't I?"

"Yes, you did."

"Then just leave me alone. I'll call you if I want someone to watch me change again."

Regina sighed heavily, her shoulders sagging just the slightest bit before resetting themselves. Emma almost didn't notice the slight deflation it was so minute and quick. 

"I want to trust you with me," Regina said.

"But?"

"But I can't. It's nothing to do with you. It's me. And it's... a long story I'd rather not get into."

"That's not cryptic or anything."

"Emma please just... understand this," Regina said imploringly. "I'm just asking you to stay close to me for a while. Once we switch back you never have to set foot in this house again if you don't want to."

Emma glared at the other woman for a long moment before relenting. Whatever this was, it was Regina's shit dragging her down, and if she let Regina call these shots maybe they'd be switched back sooner. If she wasn't freaking out about what Emma was doing with her body then Regina would be able to focus on getting control of Emma's magic. 

"Fine," she said. "But if I have to be here then two things need to happen. I want my stuff. Not just my clothes for you to wear but I want my things—books and movies and whatever—so I have something to do when we’re not figuring this out. And I need you to ease up on Killian. Both of you."

"I didn't say anything during lunch—"

"Not just until we're out of this mess," Emma interrupted. "In general. He's not a bad guy. You might even like him if you got to know him."

"I won't," Regina said stubbornly. "I'm not going to even consider that. I'll be kind to you and I'll stop talking about him in that way but I will _not_ be trying to become his best friend."

Emma felt a clench on anger in her gut that bubbled up so quickly it surprised her a little. A little flash of purple burst from her and she smelled something burning. 

"Emma!" Regina said in shock. Her eyes were on Emma's hands, both of which had sparked, sending little pops of flame over the bed sheets. 

Emma lurched off the bed in surprise, cursing as she shook her hands out, trying to put a stop to what had happened. The sparks fizzled out and Regina didn't hesitate to slap the bed sheets where they'd fallen to make sure they didn't ignite. 

"What was that?" Regina demanded. 

“I don’t know it just happened,” Emma snapped, glancing at her hands and realizing they were trembling almost wildly. She was surprised by how quickly she’d gotten so angry. “Probably your dark magic playing up. I got pissed and your magic pretty much feeds off of that, doesn’t it?”

Regina looked almost wounded by the insinuation—she knew her magic was dark and she knew it was dark for a reason. She wished she had never told Emma about her magic now that it was being thrown back at her in the way it was.

“What did you have to get angry about?” Regina asked.

"It's a reasonable reaction to get angry when people are being unreasonable."

"It's not unreasonable!" Regina shot back. "I don't want anything to do with the pirate. You don't see me asking you to spend time with Gold."

"He isn't even a friend of yours," Emma pointed out. 

"He's as close as I have to a friend in this town," Regina said with a roll of her eyes. 

Emma's eyes widened at that and she stared at Regina for a long couple of moments. Gold was Regina's idea of a friend? Over Emma? After everything that had happened, _Gold_ was the one Regina considered closest to a friend? 

Emma hated how deep that thought had cut. She knew that Regina was... a prickly person, and that was putting it lightly. She didn't ever seem to make any kind of attachments except for with Henry. She had defense after defense after defense to keep people out of her life. But they'd gone traipsing through a jungle to save their son together—they'd moved the _moo_ n together for crying out loud. To hear Regina considered Gold a closer friend than Emma nearly broke the Sheriff. 

Besides all that, it wasn't that Emma wanted Regina to like Killian for not reason—it was because _she_ considered Regina to be one of _her_ closest friends. She had thought they'd gotten to be better while they were in Neverland. Sure she'd initially thought they were going to get closer than just friends at times, but it hadn't happened and so Emma had settled into what she had _thought_ was a good friendship. 

Clearly Regina hadn't thought the same. 

"Fine," Emma said blankly, feeling herself shutting down in the face of this news. "No to Killian and I'll sit next to you at all times so you don't have to worry I'm screwing around with your body."

Regina could catch the hint of anger and dissatisfaction even with the blankness of Emma's tone. 

"I don't want to—"

"Stop, Regina," Emma said. "Just... stop. We'll deal later, okay? I don't want to talk about it anymore."

Regina looked frustrated as anything but didn't fight her on that. 

"I was going to go downstairs to watch a movie with Henry," Regina said. "I'd like it if you joined us."

 _'So she can keep an eye on you_ ,' a voice told Emma, but instead of addressing that she said, "Only if I get to change out of this first." She gestured to the dress. 

Regina hesitated for a long moment before nodding. 

"Can we do that the way we did this morning?" Regina asked. 

Emma just heaved a sigh, nodded, and got up. She stalked last the woman in her body and down the hall to Regina's room. She heard the other woman following behind her but didn't look at her. Regina went into the closet and rummaged around, returning with a pair of ratty old sweatpants and a t-shirt. Emma raised a brow at the sight of them. 

"You can't expect that I dress like the Mayor in my own home," Regina said. 

"Wouldn't put it past you," Emma said. She took the offered clothing and shut the door to the room. She began to change, moving quickly and not letting her hands or fingers linger. It was weird, staring directly into someone else's eyes while they watched her change clothes, but she figured if Regina needed that then she would give it to her. 

When she was dressed, she wanted to just climb back into the bed but she'd agreed to watch a movie with them. 

"You good?" she asked Regina dully. 

"I am," she said. "And if you'd like we can go get you some of your things afterwards?" 

Emma nodded, totally disconnected from the situation at the moment. All she wanted was to go back in time and stop herself from casting the stupid spell. If she'd never done that she'd be happily snuggled up with her boyfriend, spending time with her family, and under the impression that Regina considered her a friend. She missed thinking that way. 

She knew it was stupid, but Regina's opinion meant a lot to her. Not just because she had a crush on the Mayor she couldn't quite shake but because Regina was... well, Regina. Regardless of what Regina thought of their friendship, Emma had held it in high regard, especially lately. She respected Regina and the lengths she was going to in order to be better for their son. The fact that Regina's opinion was apparently that Emma's taste in men sucked, they weren't friends, and she wasn't trusted was a miserable thing to focus on. 

She followed Regina silently back down stairs, not really paying much attention as she plopped on to a sofa in the living room. It wasn't until she heard the familiar sounds of one of her favorite movies from the TV that she paid attention to anything other than her grievances. 

"Bringing Up Baby?" she asked Regina curiously. 

"You mentioned it was a favorite of yours a while back," Regina said. "I went digging and found that the library in town has a stash of old movies and this just happened to be one of them."

Despite everything that had just transpired, a damnable bubble of delight and hope rose in Emma. Regina had remembered one of her favorite movies and had gone looking for it. 

"We can use that stash at the new movie theater that's going to be put in," Emma pointed out, trying to keep a cool head. 

"Movie theater?" Henry asked excitedly. 

"Yes, a movie theater," Regina said. "But lets pay attention to this movie for now."

They fell silent to watch the movie and after a while Regina got up to go make popcorn. She brought back two heaping bowls and one smaller bowl, passing the larger ones to Emma and Henry. Emma was a little amazed she'd been given a big bowl considering it was Regina's waistline that would be affected, but she didn't question it. It felt like an olive branch and Emma would take it. 

It occurred to her that she shouldn't be so wrapped up in Regina's opinion of her or her friendship. Her opinion could be important but not the end of the line. Besides that, Killian reminded her all the time that Regina wasn't the one she was dating. She worried that a part of her would always wish that were the case sometimes. 

She forced herself to focus on the screen. It was one of her favorite movies from when she was a kid, she had a bowl of popcorn, and her son at her side. What wasn’t to like? She didn’t need Regina to be her friend. She had plenty in her life. And once she got back to her _real_ life she could go back to how it was before.

Emma ignored the bubbling up of dread she could feel deep inside of herself at that thought and stuffed some popcorn into her mouth, instead trying to think of what books and movies she’d want to bring with her to Regina’s until this whole debacle was over.

It was all she _could_ do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was debating back and forth whether Henry would figure it out and then I was like, "Duh, of course he would." He's not stupid and they've slipped up just enough!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: Hook being an a-hole (so Hook being Hook) and secrets being told to people they're not supposed to be told to, suspicion and worry mounting.
> 
> Late by a few hours, for which I apologize. Depression's hittin' hard lately and I can barely get anything done, but I'm gonna try to be better about posting next week. I'm gonna be honest though, I've got my beginning and ending planned as well as a number of scenes throughout, but there are lots of spots that I'm not sure what I'm doing, and this chapter was one of those spots. I'm wishing I'd gotten more written before I started posting like I did with my last fic (which I actually had almost all of written before I even thought of posting) but I jumped the gun on that. Kind of struggling to keep up/keep it good, but I'm doing my best. 
> 
> I'm eternally grateful for your kind comments and kudos--they're definitely keeping me writing, so thank you all for the encouragements!
> 
> EDIT: Sorry about the multi-post of this chapter! The site kept giving me 404s when I hit 'post' so I clicked a bunch of things haha. All set now and sorry if anyone got multiple updates on chapter postings!

Regina was silent through the entire movie though Emma and Henry chatted idly and talked about what they were watching. Regina couldn't help a few small smiles when Emma would get excited about certain scenes and tell everyone to, "Oooh watch this part!" It was adorable, and Regina couldn't deny it. 

Despite enjoying the subject as much as the next person, Regina couldn't fully focus on the movie. The way that Emma had gotten angry was worrying--she'd lost control of the magic she currently wielded and if she did again then it could be catastrophic. Regina's magic would destroy anything in its path if it wasn't fully controlled. Not to mention it had a habit of clambering for more and more anger to power it. 

As she'd developed her magic and her abilities, Regina had fed it with more and anger until it was as dark as magic could get. It had become a cycle after a while, she would get angry, use her magic, feel a bit better after the release, then she would end up getting almost itchy for more. It demanded to be used and used for darkness. The magic was nearly alive in that respect, and it fought to survive even to this day. If she didn't battle it back it infected her until she provided the anger and unhappiness that it grew from. 

The fact that it was her own body that contained that magic didn't worry her as much as it worried her that Emma's mind might be touched by the same darkness. Sure the Savior wasn't entirely pure--Regina knew no one ever was, and especially not Emma since she revealed her past with Neal--but the concentrated darkness Regina's magic was born from wouldn't help anything. It could very easily take Emma over the way it had taken Regina, and Regina would hate herself if she was the reason something like that happened to the Sheriff. 

She'd have to make sure Emma didn't get angry then. Not until they were switched back at least. She'd make sure to keep Emma happy, she'd step in when Emma seemed frustrated, and just keep her away from the magic as much as she could. 

Earlier certainly hadn't helped anything. She couldn't quite figure out what had happened that had set Emma off so badly. Sure it was her boyfriend that Regina and Henry disliked but since when did she care that much about what other people thought? Regina had thought it was pretty apparent from the start that no one really liked the pirate's presence--her own father had hated him. What had gotten her so angry? Unless she really was that sensitive about people disliking Hook. Regina figured that would be frustrating, but she wasn't about to try to make friends with the man. 

More worrying to Regina was the fact that Emma had then just totally shut down. It was as if she'd just had too much to bear and turned off instead of dealing with it. Regina had gotten what she'd wanted, but at what cost? Emma didn't _do_ that, and it scared Regina a little more than she wanted to say. 

She tried to rack her brain to figure out what exactly she'd said to make Emma react that way. Maybe it was just all that about Hook. Regina hoped so. 

As the credits began to roll, Regina realized she had zoned out and had been staring at Emma for the last fifteen minutes or so. She caught Emma looking back at her curiously and with a hint of defiance. Regina balked, turning her gaze away. 

"Your things," Regina said, clearing her throat as she tried to forget that Emma had caught her staring. 

"My things?" the other woman said, sounding confused. 

"Do you want to go get them?" Regina hated how flustered she seemed at the moment. 

"I can't exactly waltz into my parents' place and start taking my stuff," Emma pointed out, gesturing to the body she occupied and the face she wore. "You'll have to do it for me."

Regina nodded. 

"Get me a list of what you want and I'll get it all," she told the other woman. "I'll tell them Henry asked for you to stay here for a bit."

"I'll back you up on that," Henry said eagerly. Regina could tell the idea of having both his mothers under one roof was exciting to him and she couldn't help but be delighted by his enthusiasm. 

Emma got up and went hunting for a piece of paper and a pen. When she found one she returned to plop back down on the couch, starting to scribble out exactly what she wanted. Regina was a little amazed by how much she was writing down, but she didn't fight her when Emma handed the list over. She didn't want Emma getting angry. 

"Is this all?" Regina asked. "You sure?"

Emma looked suspicious, like she was expecting sarcasm, and Regina wished she would just accept the questions as the simple questions they were. 

"Yeah, that's all," Emma said. "I figure it should tide me over for entertainment for a few nights and we can spend the days working on fixing ourselves."

Regina nodded and folded up the note, tucking it into her back pocket. 

"Are you ready to go?" she asked Emma. 

Emma looked immediately exasperated. 

"Do I really have to troop over there to sit around while you get my stuff for me?" she asked. "They're going to think it's weird, 'you' hovering around 'me' while I pack up my things."

Regina was shocked by the other woman's reluctance to go. 

"Miss Swan, you--"

"Oh don't 'Miss Swan' me," Emma said with a roll of her eyes. 

"I need you to come with me," Regina said, trying to keep her cool at the way Emma was snapping at her. 

"I don't want to," Emma said simply. "I just got comfortable. Can't I just stay with Henry? We can't leave him unattended."

"I'm not a little kid, I can--" Henry started to protest but he was silenced by the look Emma gave him. 

Regina realized that if Emma was annoyed enough to get annoyed with Henry like that then she was definitely annoyed enough that magic might start coming into play. Emma almost never disciplined or got angry with their son. 

She fought for a moment with herself, a part of her wanting to push the issue and demand Emma go with her. She still didn't want Emma alone with her body. It was the only reason she'd invited her. When it came down to it though, it was either force the issue and have peace of mind or get Emma angry. 

Henry wouldn't let Emma do anything, right? And Emma wouldn't do anything with Henry in the house anyways. 

"I'll be back soon," she promised the two.

Emma's relieved, "Okay," was thankfully brushed to the side as Henry got up and went to hug Regina. He wrapped his arms tightly around her waist and squeezed her, making her smile widely. 

"Love you, Mom," he said. 

She leaned down just slightly to kiss him on the forehead. 

"I love you, too," she said, brushing her fingers through his hair. She caught Emma's gaze on them and smiled sheepishly, aware she usually melted whenever Henry was as sweet as that. Emma's expression was almost fond, and Regina attributed it to their son. 

When Henry let her go, Regina headed out, going for the keys to the bug. She got into the car and started to drive across town, her mind whirling with thoughts of the other woman. She couldn't get the endless stream of Emma doing something to her body out of her head though she knew logically that there was no way Emma would dare. Or at least she hoped there was no way Emma would dare. It was going to drive her mad if she thought on it any longer. 

She had to get home quickly if she wanted to put those thoughts to rest. 

When she arrived, she parked the bug and walked up to the Charmings' apartment, knocking twice. She waited a moment, hearing the sounds of shuffling behind the door. When the door swung open to Snow wearing an overly pleasant expression, Regina fought a grimace. Snow's brow furrowed a bit in confusion but she didn't stop smiling. 

"Why did you knock?" she asked. "You live here."

Regina felt like she'd automatically gotten caught and mentally cursed herself. She should have remembered to just waltz in--she wasn't in the body of a guest, she was in the body of a tenant. 

"I wanted to be sure I wasn't walking in on anything," she said. 

Snow's face turned pink but she laughed. 

"Well you haven't," she said. "Your father and I aren't animals, especially when we have company."

"Company?" Regina asked. 

"Aye, love."

The voice made Regina's stomach turn. He was still there? It had been hours. And from the strained smile Snow shot her, Hook had overstayed a welcome in the pixie haired woman's eyes. Snow stepped back and let Regina into the apartment as Hook stood from a chair at the breakfast bar and crossed the room to the newcomer. 

"Finally back from the Evil Queen's?" he asked, going to slip a hand around Regina's waist. 

She reminded herself she looked like Emma and forced herself not to immediately try to slap him. She thought to move away but she remembered Emma's unhappiness at her intense hatred of the man. Besides that, she truly didn't want to ruin Emma's relationship, even if Regina never approved of it. 

"Only for a few minutes," she said. " _Regina_ has a bit more to teach me today and Henry asked if I could stay over."

"What?" Hook asked, his eyes widening in surprise. "And you're doing that?"

"Yeah," Regina said simply, unconsciously leaning just the slightest bit away from the man. His hand felt so foreign and so filthy wrapped around her. "It's Henry."

"And Regina," Hook said, anger obviously brewing in his eyes. "Why do you want to stay over there? Why can't Henry come over here again?"

"It's Regina's night with him," the woman said, trying to force some kind of casualness into her tone. If she were in her own body she wouldn't even try it, but then again, if she were in her own body she wouldn't have been in the situation in the first place. "And he asked me to do it. If I didn't say yes he'd be heartbroken."

"He'd get over it," Hook said. 

"It's not a big deal, it's just for Henry."

"And Regina being there will just sweeten the deal for you," Hook shot back. 

"What are you talking about?" Regina demanded, glad for the excuse to pull out of his hold now. 

"I'm not stupid, lass," the pirate said. "I know you've still got a thing for her. I don't want you staying over there. I let you spend enough time with her."

Regina's eyes widened in shock and she was relieved when she didn't have to respond because David was speaking up for her. 

"You don't _let_ my daughter do anything," David snapped. "She makes her own decisions."

"You can't agree with her that it's a good idea to spend time over at Regina's when she's still making doe eyes at that woman every time her back is turned!" Hook snapped. "I don't like the idea of it."

"That's not fair to Emma," Snow shot back. "She's dating you, not Regina. She's not about to break your trust just because she's spending time over there."

"Besides that, she's said she knows Regina isn't interested," David added, sounding like he was talking down to Hook. "Even if she wanted to it isn't like Regina would reciprocate."

"Oh so I'm meant to take solace in the fact that my girlfriend only stays with me because the Mayor's lacking a heart?" Hook asked with a roll of his eyes. 

Regina was stunned by the turn of events and was only just barely keeping up with what was being said. Hook saying that Emma had a thing for her was one thing, but the open and obvious knowledge of those feelings by Emma's parents was just too much. They all knew that Emma liked her, not just as a friend either. How long had this been public knowledge? How long had Emma liked her? 

She realized suddenly that if Emma liked her then she was absolutely right in being suspicious of leaving Emma alone in her body, and panic struck her as Hook turned back to the woman he thought was his girlfriend. 

"You've already forgotten your plans with me today to go over to see her," Hook said. "Even if it is totally innocent, you can't just drop me whenever you feel like it for her."

"It's not for her," she spat, not wanting to have to be around him any longer when he was obviously in a terrible mood. She didn't want to be around him when he was in a good mood, never mind a bad one. "It's for my _son_. I'm sorry I cancelled our plans earlier but I do need to learn how to control my magic in case anything happens again. Even if that wasn't the case, I'm going back over there for Henry. That's the end of it."

"Like hell it is—"

Hook wasn't able to finish because Regina brushed past him, heading up to the loft area she'd woken up in that morning. She pulled the list out of her back pocket and went searching through the Sheriff's room to find what was on that list. It didn't take long for footsteps to come clomping up the stairs. 

"Emma," Hook said as he stalked up to the landing, "you have to see where I'm coming from here. You've told me that you find her attractive and that you've wanted to be with her. I can't imagine that's gone away in the month since you told me."

"I can," Regina said, unable to handle or process what she was hearing. It was too ridiculous to be true, too many months too late, and she didn't want to hear any more of it. "It has. I don't feel anything for her. She's my son's other mother and my magic teacher. That's it." 

She found a duffle bag in Emma's closet and pulled it out, starting to put what was requested into the bag. 

"Somehow I find that a bit hard to believe," Hook shot back. 

"How so?" She didn't stop to look at him for a second. 

"You drop everything to run to her any time she asks you to," he said. 

"She only asks me to go to her for important reasons," Regina said. 

"Except when it's just dinner with her and Henry."

"That's for Henry's benefit, and he asks for her to come over." That much was true, but Regina could never deny how delighted she was when Henry asked for that and Emma accepted the request--which she always did. 

"And what about the impromptu magic lessons?"

"Today was the first time."

"First time?" he asked. "So there are going to be more? Sounds an awful lot like you're setting up for that—what's it called?—that thing—"

"What are you talking about?" Regina asked, exasperated and confused. 

"A—an ass call," he said. 

"A what?"

"An ass call!" he exclaimed. "Whatever it's called when someone calls you and you go over to have sex with—"

Regina actually had to laugh at that. She was sure Henry thought she was a dinosaur with how little she knew about popular culture and what younger people spoke like but she at least knew what a booty call was. 

"What are you laughing about?" Hook demanded, getting more annoyed with her laughing at him. 

"She's not calling me over for that," she told him. "It was just magic stuff. Nothing for you to get your panties in a bunch over. She's not trying to seduce me when I go over there."

"There's another thing," Hook said. "You defend her every chance you get."

"Because she's changed," Regina said, getting the last few books on the list into the duffle. 

"She's the Evil Queen."

"She's not the one who put the word 'Evil' in there."

"She's the one who earned it."

"And you?" she asked. "What have you done to become such a saint that you're able to pass all this judgment?"

"You know I'm a good man—"

"I know that you're a charmer and a swashbuckling adventurer," Regina shot back icily, "but I also know that you seem to think you own me, you're possessive, and you feel entitled to my time. I've told you over and over that I'm not going to do anything with her. You have no reason not to trust me. I chose you over her and over Neal. I'm not hearing any complaints about when I spend time with him."

"Maybe not now but you know I don't like him—"

"God will you just let this go?!" Regina finally snapped. "I'm going over there and I'm staying there as long as _Henry_ wants me to stay. I don't care where Regina is or what she's doing, but she won't be touching me and I won't be touching her. Now if you'll get out of my way, I'll be leaving."

Hook looked stunned for a moment as Regina hoisted the duffle bag on to her shoulder. She stalked towards the stairs down into the main living area but was stopped as she tried to brush past the pirate. His hand wrapped around her wrist and tightened viciously. 

So much panic exploded in her that she knew if she were in her body she'd have burst with magic and flung him aside. As it was, white light surged forward, bursting ineffectively from her for a moment before dulling dramatically. Hook let out a noise of surprise but his grip only tightened, and Regina yanked harshly at her hand. She _really_ didn't like being grabbed like that, but especially not by someone she trusted so little. 

"Let me go," she bit out, her teeth clenched as she fought against his hold. 

"I don't know what your problem is Swan, but—"

"Let her go, Hook."

David's voice practically boomed from down the steps and both Hook and Regina looked down at him. There was a moment of confusion as they remembered the Charmings were still there, but the fury and distaste on David's face was enough to have Hook letting go of the woman he thought was his girlfriend. 

"I think it's time you left," David said. 

The pirate looked utterly enraged but he stormed down the steps, past David, across the room, and out the door without another word. Regina watched him go silently, trying to get her bearings. It was the second time that day he had reminded her of a time she'd much rather not think about. 

"We didn't mean to listen in," David explained almost sheepishly to the woman he thought was his daughter. "It's just an open air apartment and all..."

"And he clearly wasn't going to listen to a thing you were saying," Snow added. "Sometimes men don't listen to anyone but other men."

"You're right," Regina said, realizing she sounded shaky. She cleared her throat. "Thanks for that."

"Are you okay?" David asked cautiously. 

"I'm fine," she said quickly. She hurried down the steps. "I'll be fine. I just want to get back to Henry now."

"Of course," Snow said, but she looked uncertain. "We don't want to keep you waiting."

"Emma," David said, and when Regina turned to look at him again he hesitated a moment before asking, "Are you sure you're okay? You seem shaken."

"I'm fine," Regina said again. "I promise I'm fine. But I've really got to go."

"Do you know when you'll be home?" Snow asked, moving around the kitchen island to be closer to the blonde. 

"No," she admitted. "I'll—I'll stay in touch though. I'll call tomorrow afternoon if I don't see you." She didn't want to stay in touch with them per se but a huge part of her was intensely grateful to David in particular at that moment. 

Snow smiled and moved forward, hugging the woman tightly. Regina stiffened for a moment, unwilling to hug Snow White no matter how they had attempted to bury the hatchet, but there was so much warmth and sincerity in the hug that Regina couldn't help but sink into it after a few seconds. She hugged Snow back and a part of her ached in an odd kind of way. She didn't ever hug anyone but Henry, and even those hugs were usually brief. She hadn't realized just how touch-starved she had been. 

David joined in next and when he hugged her he wrapped his arms around her, gently cradling her head with one hand. It might have sent Regina into a tailspin of worry at what he would do to her if it wasn’t so absurdly gentle a touch. 

When she was released, she was blushing a bright pink and worried that she might start to cry. 

"I'll talk to you later," she said. She ducked out of the apartment as quickly as possible, practically running to the car. Thankfully Hook hadn't stuck around so it was a clear shot into the bug. 

As she turned the car on and drove away, all she could think of was Emma's parents. She had never really thought of them as parents of anyone if she was honest—they'd never really gotten the chance to do more than have sex and pop the baby out before Regina had gotten in the way of their happily ever after—but they were so intensely parental it was absurd. They were showing their daughter intense support, protection, and love, no matter the circumstance, and Regina had never been on the receiving end of that. Sure, her father had been an enormous source of comfort when she was young, but the older she got the less Cora allowed Henry to have to do with their daughter. By the time they were both free of her control Regina was so hardened and cold Henry had treated her with a much more distant love than he’d shown her as a child. Even if the love the Charmings had shown wasn't meant for her specifically, she'd never felt that kind of unconditional love in her life. She didn't know how to react to it. 

Of course, there was a lot she didn't know how to react to at the moment. Emma apparently had at some point been interested in her and had chosen Hook instead. 

The thought spurred Regina to get back to her house faster. Emma alone in her body was one thing, but Emma alone in her body while having had a crush on her as another entirely. 

She stepped on the gas, her mind spinning with everything that had happened, fully aware the whole situation had barely taken fifteen minutes. 

 

* * *

 

"Are you stressed?" Henry asked after Regina had been gone about ten minutes. 

"Why would you ask that?" Emma asked. She was on the same couch as she'd sat down on for the movie and had sprawled across the cushions. She scrolled through articles on her phone while Henry surfed the channels. 

"Your hand," Henry said. "Mom's hands shake when she's stressed."

Emma had noticed her hands were shaky and had been since she'd tried to storm upstairs in a huff. They'd stopped for a bit during the movie before she and Regina had gotten into their little tiff. 

"Is that what this is?" she asked, holding up a trembling hand. "Stress?"

"Yeah," Henry said. "It's been happening for a while now."

"How long?"

"I dunno," he admitted. "I noticed it a month or so ago. But I don't know whether it's a new thing or not. I was with you a lot in the months before that." 

"I'll ask her about it later," Emma decided. 

"Are you gonna tell me why you're stressed?" Henry asked. 

Emma raised a brow for a moment before taking a deep breath. 

"This is all just weird," she said. "Waking up in someone else's body is weird. It's disorienting. And your mom is so suspicious that I'm going to do something to her body while I'm in it."

"Like what?"

"I don't know but she doesn't want me alone with it," Emma said. "She doesn't trust me."

"She doesn't trust anyone."

"True. But I thought we were friends."

"You _are_ friends," Henry said, his brow knit in confusion. "I think you're her closest friend."

"She said Gold was the only one who came close."

"She didn't mean it," Henry said. "She hates Gold. I read in the book what he did to her—what he and her mother did to her—and it's not pretty."

"Oh?" Emma asked.

“Yeah.”

“What kind of—“

“She got mad when she found out that I knew,” Henry said, not letting her finish her question. “She doesn’t like people knowing anything about that stuff.”

“Well why would she say that Gold was her closest friend then?"

"I dunno," Henry admitted. "But you shouldn't stress about this whole thing. You and mom will figure it out soon."

"I hope so, kid," Emma said. "I want to be back to normal."

"Well at least this way we can all spend time together as a family," Henry said, shooting a smile across the coffee table at his mother. 

She smiled back at him. 

"Yeah, that's true," she said. "We don't have to worry which of us has you, we can all just hang."

"Maybe you can play enough Mario Kart that Mom develops the muscle memory to be good at it," Henry said with a laugh. "Then when you're not around I can have a challenge for once."

"I'll do my best, but I'm sure she'll get annoyed with me for staring at a screen that much."

"She's all bark when it comes to you," Henry said, his eyes back on the screen. 

Emma's brow rose. 

"Kid, I don't want to break your heart but she's definitely not all bark," she said. 

"What do you mean?"

"When we first met she punched me square in the jaw."

"What?!" Henry's gaze snapped back to his mother. "She _punched_ you?"

"Yeah, and it wasn't light either," she said. "I punched her back of course, but still. And I can't count the amount of times we've nearly come to blows since then."

"Like recently?"

"Nah, not anymore," Emma said. "We're civil now. Friends—or whatever Regina is calling us."

"Okay... good," Henry said. "I like when you two get along. Ever since you got me back from Pan it's been... really nice."

"I plan on keeping that up," Emma said with a grin. "She's got a mean right hook."

Henry laughed at that and went back to channel surfing. Emma looked back at her phone, glancing occasionally at Regina's hands as they held the phone or tapped out on the keyboard. The shaking was slowly going away, but seeing the perfectly manicured hands continuing to tremble just the slightest bit was so odd. Why had she never noticed it before?

Because she was always focused on other aspects of Regina. Her hair for one. She loved Regina's hair. And her lips—with the little scar on the right side? It was adorable now but Emma was plagued with an intense curiosity about how she'd gotten it. She'd always wanted to know, ever since they'd first met. 

She sighed softly as she forced herself to look back at the article on her phone. She didn't need to think endlessly on Regina—she needed to get a life. Killian was getting sick of her uncrushable crush on the Mayor. She knew she never should have told him about it. He was so jealous, especially with Henry's birth father being back in her life. The news that he'd been one of a couple choices didn't sit well with him. 

She hadn't actually meant to tell him in any case. They'd been arguing over Neal and it had slipped out. He'd demanded she stop seeing Neal if she had feelings for him and she'd laughed, telling him that if there was anyone he should be worried about at that point it would be Regina. He'd held even more of a grudge against Regina since then—though Emma couldn't exactly tell why they'd disliked each other so much before then either. It seemed like they went from barely knowing each other to utterly loathing each other. Once they'd gotten back from Neverland it had only ever gotten worse and worse. 

A little while passed before she heard the bug's engine pulling into the driveway. She perked up a little with the knowledge that she'd have her stuff with her and that would make her a little more comfortable. She got up and went to the door, opening it and heading out to help Regina carry stuff in if she needed to. 

When she met Regina at the car she saw pink tinge her cheeks and Emma's brow furrowed a little. She couldn't be sure what there was to be embarrassed about but she didn't say anything about that. 

"Do you need help carrying that in?" she asked as Regina got out. "I had you get a lot."

"I can actually manage it," Regina said, not making eye contact. "It's not very difficult in your body. You're strong."

Emma couldn't help the hint of pride that dashed across her expression. 

Regina moved around the car to get the bag out of the passenger side door and hauled it up on to her shoulder. 

"Why did you ask for so much?" she asked Emma. "There's enough in here for a week's worth of reading. I'm hoping we'll be back in our bodies well before then."

Emma shrugged. 

"I'm a fast reader."

They walked back into the house and Regina looked at the other woman long enough to realize she'd gone outside barefoot. 

"Can you wash my feet before you go back to whatever you were doing?" she asked. “I don’t want to track dirt in the house.”

Emma was a little surprised that it wasn't an outright demand. Something like that seemed like something Regina would just bark an order for. Although Regina _had_ been less harsh since they'd fought in the bedroom. Emma didn't exactly know why. 

Still, the fact that she was being reasonable sat well with Emma and she hurried to the downstairs bathroom to do as she’d been asked. She heard footsteps overhead and assumed Regina brought the bag upstairs before coming back down. 

Emma made it back out by the time Regina had come down again and she paused before she was in sight when she heard Regina ask, "So what did you two do while I was gone?" Her voice held a hint of nervousness in it and Emma could guess why—Regina was checking in that Emma hadn't disappeared with her body. A sigh threatened to spill out but she held it back to listen for a moment. 

"Hung out in here," Henry said.

The relief was obvious in Regina's voice now. 

"Oh, good," she said. 

"Yeah. But you gotta tell her you're her friend."

"What?"

"She thinks you don't think she’s a friend."

"Of course I do. She's one of the few people in this town I can stand for longer than a few minutes."

Henry sighed audibly. "That's the point, Mom," he said. "You make it sound like she's just the only one who you can tolerate. And she told me you said Gold was your closest friend. You don't even like Gold. Emma thinks you don't think you two are friends because of that."

Emma waited for Regina to say something but it seemed Regina was stunned into silence. Emma reminded herself not to tell Henry anything like that again to avoid him spilling the beans about her emotions to someone else. She should have realized that a kid his age wouldn’t have thought to keep that to himself.

That in mind, she made a point to make a lot of noise as she walked into the room. Regina jumped and turned to look at Emma.

“Squeaky clean,” Emma said, gesturing down at her feet. “Well except for the lack of shower thing.”

“Lack of shower?” Henry asked, wrinkling his nose.

“We aren’t exactly in our own bodies, kid,” Emma said. “It’d be weird.”

“This whole thing is weird.”

“You’re telling us,” Regina said a bit sarcastically, but she managed the barest hint of a smile.

Henry grinned back at her and turned his attention back to the screen.

“How did getting my stuff go?” Emma asked. “Did my parents grill you on where I would be?”

“Your parents and your boyfriend,” Regina said.

“He was still there?”

“He was. He left before I did though.”

“What did you say to him?”

“I’m fairly certain you won’t want to hear it.”

Emma stared for a long moment, sure Regina was right. Then again, she needed to know after _that_.

She sighed heavily.

“Let’s go in the kitchen to talk,” she said a bit glumly.

The two women slipped out to avoid interrupting Henry’s show, Regina grabbing the empty popcorn bowls from earlier to bring into the kitchen with them. Emma noticed that Regina moved around the island in the center of the kitchen and a part of her recognized that Regina was putting space and obstacles between them.

“What happened?” she asked, dreading what was coming given how Regina was acting.

“I got there and he swooped right in, thinking I was you,” Regina started. “Then we may have gotten into a fight over whether you should be allowed to do what you want when you want to.”

“You _may_ have gotten into a fight over _what_?”

“He seemed to think it was too much to handle that you’ve spent nearly a whole twelve hours away from his side,” Regina said. “I told him that you’re allowed to spend time with your son. He seemed determined that you not come back here though.”

Emma’s eyes widened at that. She knew the exact reason why Killian wouldn’t want Emma to spend more time over at Regina’s and she prayed it hadn’t come up.

“I told him off and packed up,” Regina said. “He grabbed me when I tried to leave but your father helped out there.”

“Please tell me there wasn’t a physical fight,” Emma practically begged.

“No, nothing like that,” Regina said. “He backed down once your father stepped in. Which I have to say is the part that annoys me the most. He didn’t listen when it was someone he thought was you talking—he only listened when your father stepped in.”

“And your point is?”

“That you deserve better than that.”

Emma rubbed her forehead tiredly.

“I don’t care what you think about him or my relationship with me,” Emma said, “I just need you to maintain the peace. When we switch back I’m going to have to deal with him again.”

“Deal with him?” Regina asked pointedly.

“That’s not what I meant,” Emma snapped. “I meant that I’ll have to deal with the situation you’ve just made. I’m going to text him an apology and I want you to play nice if you see him again.”

“Mh-hm,” Regina hummed noncommittally.

“And next time you want to figure out what I’ve been doing with you, ask me to my face,” Emma added. “Don’t just ask Henry whether or not I was fucking around.”

“I didn’t ask if you were—“

“Maybe not in so many words, but I heard you talking to him,” Emma interrupted.

Regina looked annoyed but nodded.

“Fine,” she said. She hesitated a moment before saying, “I’m going to assume you heard the rest of it as well.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier you were upset about what I’d said?” Regina asked.

“Because what did it matter?” Emma asked. “Like you said, I’m just someone you can _tolerate_ —if you don’t want us to be more than co-parents there’s nothing I can do about that.”

Emma saw a number of emotions flicker across Regina’s face but she quickly did away with them and looked at Emma impassively.

“I should have chosen my words more carefully,” Regina admitted.

“It’s fine, Regina,” Emma said. “I get it. You don’t want to be friends. It’s not the end of the world. There are plenty of people in this town for both of us to hang out with.”

“It’s not that, Emma,” Regina said, and Emma could see she was struggling to keep her emotions and her expressions under control. Seeing Regina like this was a bit confusing, but Emma stayed silent. “I—I do think that you and I are very close. Henry mentioned you were upset about what I’d said about Gold and… I didn’t really _mean_ that. I’m never sure if… if you agree on our relationship. On how we feel about each other. I didn’t want to assume anything.”

Emma’s brow rose. She knew that she and Regina didn’t agree on how they felt about each other—she adored Regina and Regina didn’t see them as anything at all apparently.

“But _Gold_ is your closest friend?” Emma pressed.

“No,” Regina said with what was almost an air of admission. “He’s not. He’s just the person in town that I’ve had the most contact with. He’s been in my life since I was a teenager. He feels like the closest thing I could call a friend.”

“Even with everything he’s done to you?” Emma pressed.

Regina’s eyes widened and she opened her mouth to speak but Emma cut her off.

“No, I don’t know everything, but Henry told me the book said whatever it was he did was bad,” she said.

Regina looked torn between being relieved and being embarrassed.

“He’s been kind to me at times,” Regina said, trying for some kind of reasoning behind her comment. “He hasn’t always just… used my magic and my station to get what he wanted. He taught me and encouraged me when I was young and needed someone.”

“He used you the whole time to get here and to get back to Neal,” Emma pointed out. “I’ve got to be a better friend than _that_.”

“If it weren’t for Henry I doubt you’d have anything to do with me,” Regina said, giving a soft chuckle though the sound had no happiness to it. “I’d just be the Evil Queen you defeated.”

“Do you honestly think I’d throw you away if Henry weren’t around?” Emma asked.

“You wouldn’t even have stuck around if it weren’t for him,” Regina said. “You wouldn’t even have come here in the first place.”

“That’s besides the point, Regina,” Emma said. “Don’t deflect. I want to know: do you think I’m only around you for Henry?”

“Of course I do,” Regina said. “When do we ever spend time together when it’s not for him? Or for your magic lessons? It’s not like we’re sitting around braiding each other’s hair.”

“I didn’t know you were into that kind of thing,” Emma shot back.

Regina rolled her eyes.

“I only mean that there isn’t much common ground between us other than our son and your magic,” Regina said. “And I don’t see why you would make the effort without those things in the picture. What other reason would there be?”

A thought struck Emma suddenly, that Regina genuinely didn’t see any other reason for Emma to want to spend time with her, and that upset Emma in a way she couldn’t quite understand. Regina didn’t see herself as being worth Emma’s time unless it was as a co-parent or as a teacher, and that struck Emma almost as hard as the initial comment about Gold had.

“Because I like you,” Emma said. She said it simply, making sure that there was nothing in her tone that would be misconstrued. She didn’t want Regina to know about how she felt and didn’t want her to be scared off. Clearly their relationship was tenuous at best, and Emma was afraid the wrong word would cause Regina to cut her off completely. Emma didn’t want to lose anyone in her life, but especially not Regina.

Even with her efforts to keep from making things awkward with that statement, Regina broke eye contact, looking away and swallowing what seemed almost nervously. Emma was worried Regina was going to bolt but she reminded herself that bolting was more her own game than Regina’s.

“I appreciate that,” Regina said. She took the popcorn bowls and brought them to the sink as if she was trying to find something else to do but talk with Emma. She was turning away, going silent, and her words sounded a little like the end of a conversation. It hurt a bit, and Emma was thinking about returning to the living room to spend time with Henry when Regina spoke again.

“I like you, too.”

The words sent a jolt of delight through Emma though she knew it was stupid. It wasn’t like Regina had just confessed she felt the same way, or felt the same attraction—she just said she liked her. And considering they were talking about being friends, that was all it was going to be. Still, Emma counted it as a win in a weird kind of way.

“More than you like Gold?” Emma asked, trying to bring some levity to the conversation.

She caught sight of a smile flickering across pink lips.

“More than I like Gold,” Regina confirmed.

“Good,” Emma said.

“I do consider you a friend,” Regina said, her eyes on the sink as she turned the knob to run the water and wash out the bowls. “I have since Neverland.”

“What, you didn’t think we were friends before?” Emma teased lightly. “The constant fighting and threatening didn’t scream friendship to you?”

Regina actually laughed at that, and Emma saw the tension start to leave her body.

“I think the majority of our relationship before Neverland was pretty ridiculous,” Regina admitted.

“So at what point in Neverland did you start thinking of me as a friend?” Emma asked curiously.

“It wasn’t actually in Neverland,” Regina admitted. “Just during that whole debacle.” She finished rinsing the bowls—finally, Emma thought, though she knew Regina was just stalling looking back at her—and placed them in the dishwasher. She turned to face Emma then, meeting her gaze and doing her best not to look away. “When you kept looking for me after Greg and Tamara caught me was when I started thinking we actually were getting close. And before that I thought we might have a chance at it when you invited me to Granny’s that night for your welcome home party. Obviously after that things got a little murky, but it was an olive branch that I appreciated.”

“I knew you were capable of changing for the better even then,” Emma said, sounding just the slightest bit smug.

“To everyone else’s chagrin,” Regina shot back, but she smiled. “Half of them still don’t think I’ve even tried to change.”

“They’ll figure it out soon enough,” Emma said. “It’s impossible not to see how hard you’re working.”

It was a little surprising to Emma to see the disbelief in Regina’s expression. She knew that everyone was continuously suspicious of the woman who’d once been the Evil Queen, but people _were_ starting to notice. The Charmings for one—they seemed more at ease with Regina now. And when the Charmings did something, the other residents of Storybrooke tended to take notice and follow their lead. In Emma’s mind it was only a matter of time before Regina was fully accepted by everyone.

Regina cleared her throat and it pulled Emma out of that train of thought.

“Yes, well, even if they don’t, I always have Henry,” Regina said. She paused before adding, “And you.”

Emma smiled at the other woman and nodded.

“That’s right,” she said. “And once we’re back in our own bodies I’ll work on making sure that there are more people who get it that you’re not who you were before. Like I said before, we should make sure you have more than just work and Henry to look forward to.”

“Maybe we focus on switching back before we focus on something like that,” Regina suggested.

“Good point,” Emma said. “But can we just relax for a little bit longer? Today’s been kind of insane, and it’s not like it’d be the end of the world for us to just sit for a bit.”

Regina hesitated before nodding.

“Sure,” she said. “Tonight after Henry’s gone to bed we’ll come up with a plan. And we’ll talk things over to make sure we don’t have any more misunderstandings like earlier. Seeing you lose control of my magic when you got angry was more than a little alarming.”

Her tone was a bit dry and Emma understood completely. It had caught her off guard, the sudden burst of dark magic, and she couldn’t deny that it had been more than a little exciting as the darkness had rushed through her. Regina was right to be worried about them fighting again—Emma had already blasted and burned the other woman, so if they got into another spat and Emma lost control, who knew what Emma would do next?

“Sounds good to me,” Emma said. “For now, I’m gonna go watch whatever Henry’s watching.”

“I’ll join you both,” Regina said simply.

A part of Emma wondered if it was a way to keep close so that she could keep an eye on her, but another part just accepted it. If they were going to talk over the things that had popped up since they’d switched then she’d save the questions about why Regina was such a basket case about that. Hopefully she’d have some more answers and they’d be that much closer after their talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I considered the fact that Kathryn was a friend to Regina for a while but let's be real, she disappeared after season one and was basically never mentioned again.
> 
> Like I said in the comments up top, I'm struggling a bit with this, but hopefully I'll have the next chapter up on Saturday and hopefully I'll be more on time with some decent chapters!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very late again, but here you go. My excuse this time is two-fold: I've been busy with life and I've been working on a comic. It's a Swanqueen comic based off of a roleplay I did a few years ago with a friend and I've always thought about making it into something more. I don't know if I'm ever going to post it anywhere, but if I do it wouldn't be for a while anyways--I only got one page done lol. 
> 
> I also have some chances of spotty updates in the next month. This Thursday I'm going to be road tripping from Massachusetts to Delaware to go see a painting in a museum and next Wednesday I'll be flying out to Colorado to road trip back to Massachusetts with my friend who moved out there last year. I'm going to bring my computer on both trips and will hopefully have updates for you all, but particularly during the CO-MA road trip I'll be staying in National Parks and campgrounds for half the time so I most likely won't have WiFi for parts of that time.
> 
> Content warnings: mentions of past abuse (marital/sexual), a bit of angst

The afternoon slipped into the evening and Regina found herself keeping an eye on Emma even more closely than before. She knew how much Emma hated it--it was hard not to know Emma hated it considering her reaction earlier that day--but she couldn't help it. Any time Emma shifted she wondered what she was doing, where she was going, whether or not she was thinking about the fact that she was in the body of a woman she apparently liked. 

It scared Regina to know Emma had at one point been attracted to her if the Mayor was honest. She'd only ever known of the attractions of three people in her life: Daniel, Leopold, and Graham. The very thought of Emma being added to that list—a woman no less—was so beyond bizarre that she couldn't quite grasp it. 

She herself was hung up on the woman thing. She was a woman and Emma was a woman. As a girl she'd admired a few of her maids, as a Queen she'd teased courtiers about stealing their wives, and now she had to acknowledge that before she'd stuffed her feelings down she had admired Emma Swan in that same way. She'd never acted on those admirations or flirtations, keeping everyone at a distance, but now there was no distance. Emma was inside of her, quite literally. 

The words made her blush even as she thought them. Emma wasn't inside of her in  _that_ way, but her brain held on to the double entendre and repeated it so many times she almost wanted to take a forgetting potion. 

It wasn't that she didn't want that either--it was that she very much did at the same time that she didn't.

It was difficult being so torn over something like that. She wanted Emma more than she knew she should have given—well, given every fact of the situation that they found themselves in at that moment. She admired Emma in a way her mother had once told her was filthy and immoral. According to Cora, women who were attracted to other women were perverted witches who would spend eternity paying for their deviance and depravity. While that voice was slightly quieter with her mother dead and the opinions of the non-magical world telling her largely that it wasn't a big deal, it was still a voice that spoke up on occasion. 

The louder voice in her head wasn't her mother's voice chastising her on a deviation from Cora's straight and narrow path though. The louder voice was deeper, darker, angrier, drunkenly demanding why she wasn't Eva, angrily informing her it was her duty as his wife to serve him, shouting that he would shut her up however he had to so that he could do what he wanted with her in peace. He'd always hated when she'd cried when he wanted her to look pretty. 

Leopold's voice had stood the test of time no matter how Regina had tried to escape it. He had been a kind and generous king, but he'd been royalty and he'd been a man, used to getting what he wanted when he'd wanted it. He had largely ignored Regina unless it suited him as if she were simply a toy to be picked up and used when it pleased him, but when she'd been very clearly unhappy with being picked up, he had always gotten so angry. A part of her always knew it really was her only duty at that point. She was meant to live in the king's service and to bear his children, but she'd never really managed to attend to his needs without grimacing or crying, and that combined with the fact that she'd never gotten pregnant had endlessly infuriated him. 

Leopold's voice rang out in her head at nearly any unexpected touch, and while she'd long since been able to ensure that she wasn't touched unexpectedly, his effect still lingered. 

Daniel had been loving and innocent—they'd never actually done anything but kiss one another and hold hands, whispering about running away together. Then he'd been killed. The softness and sweetness of her budding relationship with the stable boy had been ripped up and destroyed, and Leopold had all but salted the earth behind him as he'd torn her trust to pieces. After he'd died she'd known enough how to use her sexuality as a weapon, as something that was a means to an end, but she hadn't welcomed anyone into her bed after his death until Graham. The only reason Graham had been allowed that was because she quite literally controlled him. 

The three men whose attractions she'd known were the reasons she couldn't leave Emma alone with her body now. 

Emma was the Savior, and Regina thought that had to count for something. Still, she couldn't help it when he brain turned her down a darker path. Even if Emma was the Savior, Emma could still harbor feelings for Regina the way Hook had accused her of, and if those feelings were strong enough Emma might just take what she wanted. She _was_ Leopold's granddaughter after all. 

Regina tried to remind herself that Emma wasn't like Leopold. Emma was good. Emma was clearly listening to what Regina said in terms of keeping her eyes and hands off her body. 

Despite that, all Regina could focus on was the fact that Emma wasn't like Daniel either. Emma wasn't the sweet and innocent person who believed in the power of true love, the person who hadn't needed more than reassurances and quick pecks on the lips to declare a love that would save all the other stuff for after marriage. The fact that Regina had woken up in Hook's arms and he and Emma had very obviously been intimate the night before told Regina as much. If Emma was that sexually driven what would stop her?

Which brought Regina to her biggest point of contention with the situation. The fact that Regina couldn't control Emma the way she'd controlled Graham was maddening. Graham had gone after her doggedly in the wake of the curse being cast, and after a while Regina had grown bored enough of the quaintness Storybrooke to let him into her bedroom. It wasn't her proudest moment considering how filthy she often felt after sleeping with him, knowing his heart lay in a vault for safe keeping in case he ever got out of hand, but he'd been something she'd needed: an outlet that was safe. 

Now here Emma was, a direct descendant of Regina's late husband, a clearly sexual being with real desires, someone utterly out of Regina's control, and Emma was piloting Regina's body. 

The few times Emma had looked over Regina had made sure that the other woman didn't catch her looking. Dinner was simple, a home-made pizza that Henry got to decorate with toppings of his own choosing, and then they'd settled in to relax a bit more. By the time they were tucking Henry into bed, Regina hadn't set Emma off at all with her constant monitoring—or at least Emma didn't fight it if she noticed. 

Henry was already half asleep as Regina sat on the edge of his bed, stroking back his hair lightly as she did every single night he was with her. He was well past needing his mom to tuck him in but he never told her not to. Regina sometimes felt like she needed it more than he did and he just went along with it for her--especially since she'd gotten him back from Pan--but she never brought that up, just allowing herself to enjoy the time with her son. Emma stood leaning against the doorway, her arms crossed as she watched the two of them. 

"So tomorrow are we spending the whole day together?" Henry asked. 

"Of course not," Regina said. "You have school tomorrow."

"But with you two being switched—"

"You can go to school and we can handle ourselves," Regina said with a light laugh. "We'll most likely spend the day doing research and practicing magic with very simple spells. It's nothing you need to be present for."

Henry sighed dramatically but nodded. 

"Fine," he said. "Just call me if anything happens?"

"As long as you promise to stay focused on your school work."

"I promise," he said quickly. 

Regina leaned forward and kissed his forehead. 

"Good night, my little prince," she said. 

He grinned. 

"That sounds weird coming from Emma's mouth," he admitted. 

"Hopefully it won't happen again—or at least it won't happen too many more times," Regina said. "Good night, Henry."

"Night, Mom."

She stroked his cheek lightly and stood up. Emma had already said good night, so she straightened and moved away from the door as Regina approached. Regina shut their son's door behind her, pausing for a moment with her hand on the doorknob as if the hold on the knob was an extension of her time with her child. She caught Emma looking at her funny and raised a brow. 

"Something you'd like to say?" she asked. 

"Don't you think he's a bit old for all that?" Emma asked. "He doesn't like stuff like that."

"He's never asked me to stop doing it," Regina said. Her brow creased with worry. "Has he said something to you?"

"No, he hasn't," Emma said. "But when I tried to do that kind of thing he told me off."

"He's never said a word," Regina said worriedly. "Maybe I'll have to talk to him about it tomorrow. He's always seemed to enjoy me coming in to say good night but I don't want to embarrass him."

"Might be a good idea," Emma said a bit sympathetically. She hadn't been too offended when Henry had rebuked her attempts to settle him at night but Regina had spent his entire life tucking Henry in to bed at night. It made sense the idea of him not wanting that was a bit upsetting to her. 

Regina frowned as she looked back at her son's door. She knew he was growing up but it sat about as well with her as it did with any other parent. Just yesterday he'd been a tiny bundle she was bringing home for the first time and now he was eleven, nearly on the cusp of being a teenager. She didn't want to hold him back from being his own person but she wanted to hold on to her boy for as long as she could. 

"So we're gonna talk now, right?" Emma said, trying to draw Regina's attention away from Henry. 

Regina glanced back at her and nodded. She gestured for Emma to follow her to her bedroom and led the way silently. They'd barely made it into the room before Emma was speaking. 

"Before we start you have to let me go to the bathroom," she told Regina with an air of desperation. "Because I've had to pee since after lunch and I've been holding it."

"You what?" Regina asked in surprise. 

"I knew you'd get mad at me if I went alone and that Henry would ask if we went together," Emma said. "So if we could figure out how that's going to happen?"

Regina blushed wildly. She had hoped they'd fix themselves before that happened but it had been more than half a day, so it made sense that would come up. She had to go as well but she didn't want to admit as much. 

"I just..."

"Don't want me alone, I get it," Emma said, finishing the thought. "But this is a thing. Unless you _do_ want to follow me in, you're kind of going to have to just let it go for a few minutes."

Regina hesitated for a long moment before nodding. 

"I guess it's better than getting a UTI," she said hesitantly. "My bathroom is through there."

Emma looked relieved and nodded. 

"I promise Regina, I'll be quick," she said. "I'll be quick and I won't look or do anything weird with you. Just in, done, hands washed, out. Then when I come back out we can talk about everything."

Regina wanted to find a way that this particular issue would go away but she knew they couldn't. She'd just have to let it go for a few moments like Emma said. At least Emma was promising to be quick about it. 

"Leave the door open?" she asked. 

She could tell this wasn't what Emma wanted to hear but the blonde nodded anyways and practically bolted for the master bathroom. She left the door open as she raced inside and Regina heard her doing what she needed to do in there. She didn't look in, wanting to keep from annoying or angering the other woman, but she sat silently on her bed, her whole body tense as she waited. 

Emma did as she said she would though, and within two minutes she was striding back out into the bedroom, her hands still a little damp from how quickly she'd dried them. 

"Didn't even peek," Emma said, and the openness of the statement made Regina inclined to believe her. "Can we start our talk with why you won't trust me enough to leave me alone in your body?"

Regina nodded. She sat on the edge of her bed and when she gestured for Emma to do the same, Emma sat down next to her. 

"I don't know that I want to get too detailed with it," she admitted. "It's hard to talk about sometimes. I don't think I've ever actually really told anyone but Archie when I went to him for therapy for a while."

Regina looked defensive already, as if expecting the other woman to make fun of her for seeking help from a therapist, but Emma's brow creased in sympathy and she nodded. 

"I've got some of those stories, too," she admitted. Regina's expression shifted to curiosity and Emma shrugged. "If I need to tell you I will. Right now let's focus on making this easier." She gestured between them. "I want to understand what will keep you comfortable and why you aren't comfortable with me. You know I'm your friend and friends trust each other."

All she really wanted was to be able to relax a little bit, or failing that, to understand why she wasn't being allowed to. 

"Do they really?" Regina asked lightly. "Lots of people call themselves friends one day and stab each other in the back the next."

"I'm not going to do that to you," Emma told her. 

"A year ago you were trying to take my son from me and ruin me," Regina pointed out. 

"I didn't know the real you a year ago," Emma said. "I have no ulterior motive for being your friend either, so just accept that I like you and that's it."

Regina wanted to protest—wanted to find another way to put off a conversation about her past and her feelings—but she knew she had to let it go or they would get in another argument. She also knew of the double meaning of Emma's words, that she really did _like_ like her, and as childish as it was to say in that way, Regina didn't know how else to put it in that moment. 

Silence hung between them as they both thought on what to say and how to say it. Regina wasn't sure how to broach the subject and Emma wasn't sure if she was meant to be narrowing down the answer to her problem by asking questions, so they sat for a long moment with only the light ticking of Regina's alarm clock to interrupt the complete lack of noise. 

"The reason I don't trust you with my body is because other people have used my body for their own gain in the past," Regina said in a rush. She only just barely met Emma's gaze as she spoke and Emma noticed that Regina was stiff as a board. "When I was young my mother dolled me up and trotted me around, but if I put a toe out of line... She wasn't a kind woman. She had an image of what I was meant to be in her head and any deviation was punished. Archie said it had to have 'done a number' on me, always worrying what the person I'm meant to trust the most at such a young age is going to do to me."

"I can see that," Emma said almost gently, and she saw the way Regina's brow furrowed a little at that tone. She reined it back quickly. "So your mother punished you for small things and that's why you have trust issues." She made it sound so cut and dry, but Regina knew that if she didn't fully explain—or at least hint at the explanation—then Emma wouldn't truly get it. 

"Partially," she said. "And then she sold me off."

"Sold you?"

"In a way," Regina said. "I'm sure you've heard the story of my marriage."

"Yeah, to Leopold, right? My mother's father."

"Yes, Leopold," Regina said. 

Emma noticed Regina's voice sounded different, sounded... off when she said that name. 

"You saved my mother from falling off a horse and Leopold asked for your hand in marriage."

"Exactly," Regina said. "My mother accepted the proposal and Leopold sent piles of gold to her—partly in thanks for a new bride, partly to ensure that she'd make me the bride he wanted. I was seventeen at the time and terrified of being a terrible wife and queen. I did my best, but it never really worked out. Leopold always compared me to Eva, and he was usually busy with either the kingdom or Snow. When he did have time for me it was usually at night."

Emma realized suddenly what was coming next but she didn't say anything—she just prayed that she was wrong. Of course she wasn't, but she prayed that she was. 

"I was seventeen and a virgin when I married Leopold, but I had to do what brides did on their wedding nights," Regina said blankly. "We didn't know about the female body there the way we know about it here--I've learned that it's possible to have a first time that doesn't hurt, but that wasn't even a thought in my head in that realm. It hurt and it soured me for everything with him after that. There's also the fact that he was my parents' age. I never wanted to sleep with him again, but I was his wife and it was my duty to bear him children, so I did what I had to at the time. He'd catch me wincing or crying though, and he would get angry. Especially if he'd been drinking. There were nights that I would wake up to him doing what he pleased with me. He never bothered to speak to me or deal with me outside of his bedroom, and inside of his bedroom he treated me like a novelty."

Emma felt sick. She'd only ever heard glowing descriptions of her grandfather: how fair of a ruler he was, how wonderful a father, how kind a man. She knew she'd heard it all from Snow, so it was a biased account, but hearing this from Regina was a lot. She wanted to say it wasn't true, but even if she didn't have her super power she would know Regina wasn't lying. Regina's voice was so devastatingly hollow and her eyes were unfocused. 

"You think I'm going to do something like that?" Emma asked the other woman. "You think I'm going to—to—just use you like that?"

"No," Regina said, seeming to come back to herself. "I don't think that."

"But why—"

"I don't think you will," Regina interrupted. "I feel like you will. Realistically I know that there's no way you would consider something like that. You're obnoxiously good. But I still feel like you will if I give you enough time alone."

"Regina..."

"I know," she said. "You can assure me all you want, I'm always going to have that hovering at the back of my mind. Archie said that I could talk about it all I wanted, I had to actually address the issue head on if I wanted to be able to get past it and... well I haven't quite done that yet." 

"It's been decades," Emma said softly. 

"And I haven't had a reason to need to address it before now."

"Wouldn't you want to be close to someone without worrying what they'd do?" Emma asked. She realized something suddenly. "Wait. Graham. How did you—"

"He wasn't going to try anything," Regina said. "He was my servant in the other world. He was drawn to working for me and listening to me the same way Sidney was. And even if he was going to do something I... I had his heart."

"He loved you?" Emma asked. 

For a moment, Regina considered telling Emma the truth, that she had physically held Graham’s heart and that she’d crushed it when it had suited her needs. She had never divulged that particular secret, nor had it ever occurred to Emma that was what had happened. Regina had considered telling her a number of times to get the secret off of her chest, and every time—no matter how many times she told herself it would help her to better herself as a person—she shied away from doing it. Despite what she was doing to be a better person, Regina still couldn’t tell her that, and as with every other time, Regina put it aside and lied.

“In a way,” she said. “He and I were very close here, and I knew he wasn’t going to do anything to me. Besides that, we had nearly thirty years to get to know one another, and I figured out just how much I could trust him.”

Emma hummed softly in a way that let Regina know that she was both understood and believed. Emma could believe it easily enough in any case. She knew he was the Huntsman in the other realm, that he’d worked for Regina in both worlds, and that he’d enjoyed her company sexually. There had to have been some drawn between them, even with what Regina had done that would make sure Graham was someone Regina could let go a little around him.

“I’m not asking that we get to that level obviously,” Emma started, and she was surprised when Regina’s face took on a look of shock and discomfort that Emma couldn’t really make sense of. Was the thought of an intimate relationship with Emma really that disgusting to Regina? Or was she just touchy given the nature of the conversation? Emma couldn’t quite place why Regina would react in that way and so she plowed on. “I just want to find a way that I can live in your body for however long this takes and not have you freaking out or breathing down my neck.”

“I don’t know that I can do that,” Regina admitted.

“Okay,” Emma said, sounding more than a little exasperated. “But I need alone time. Even when I’m with my parents or Killian or Henry I get alone time because they know that I need it.”

“No one _needs_ alone time,” Regina said.

“I do.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Regina shot back. “Who would _want_ to be alone? Who ever sat in a room full of people who loved them and thought that they’d want to be somewhere quieter?”

“Someone who never got to be alone in their childhood maybe?” Emma said. “Someone who grew up in group homes where nothing was ever theirs and they never got a moment’s peace? Someone who spent years and years being pestered by the younger kids and harassed by the older kids who were in the same house where the foster parents just wanted government checks and free labor?”

Regina opened her mouth to argue the point before she realized what Emma was saying.

“I had a few quiet times with a few foster families,” Emma said. “There were some people who let me have my own room or some time to myself. But the majority of the time I was in foster care it was loud and cramped and I was absolutely miserable. I’ve always wanted alone time, even after coming here. As an adult I was able to get it easily, but once the curse broke my parents were obnoxious about it until I told them what I needed.”

“I—Oh,” she said. She took a moment to absorb the information and think over what they could do about it. It wasn’t like there was a simple fix for either of them. They’d both be uncomfortable at some point with this, and as much as Regina desperately wanted to tell Emma that she had to be the uncomfortable one to save Regina’s own sanity, she knew she couldn’t do that to her. Not only did she not want to anger her for fear of causing another magical accident, Regina didn’t want to upset her because she did genuinely care about Emma.

“We’ve got to figure out a compromise then,” Regina said after a moment. “If you just promise to be quick about things that require you to be unclothed, I can try to calm down a little when it comes to giving you time alone. I’d just like for that alone time to be somewhere close by if that’s possible.”

“I can do that,” Emma said. “I’m not looking to ogle you anyways, so I can keep any of that quick. What do you mean by close by though?”

“Just in the same building,” Regina said. “In this house, or if you want to go to the library or the station for that alone time, I can make myself scarce in the same building.”

“I think I’ll be fine just being in the house,” Emma said. “We don’t want to take this freak show on the road.”

“That’s true,” Regina said with a tight smile. It faded after a moment or two. “I also need to talk to you about what happened earlier.”

“What about earlier?”

“When you lost control of my magic.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“First I need to know why you were so angry,” Regina said, and it sounded so clinical that Emma almost wanted to roll her eyes.

“Why do you think, Regina?” Emma asked.

“We were talking about Hook, but I don’t see why it would get you so angry that I don’t want to be around him,” Regina said. “It’s not as if I have to approve of him for you to date him.”

“We all know you clearly _don’t_ approve in any case,” Emma said. “But it’s not that I need you to, it’s that I _want_ you to. I want the important people in my life to get along. What are you staring at me like that for?”

Regina had tried to hide her shock but she clearly hadn’t done so fast enough to not be caught by Emma.

“I just never expected you to think I was an important person in your life.”

“We just went over this.”

“I know, but it still sounds strange when you’ve spent the better part of the last four decades of your life being endlessly hated by everyone but your son—and occasionally being hated by him as well.”

“Unless you really genuinely fuck up, you aren’t going to be hated by me,” Emma told her, her words holding the air of a promise.

A million thoughts tumbled through Regina’s mind, everything from what had really happened to Graham to the fight she’d just had with Hook in the Charmings’ apartment, and she wondered what a _genuine_ fuck up meant in Emma’s mind. No matter what Emma said, Regina knew that there were things that she would never make up for in her life, and she was constantly terrified that all of her attempts at being a better person would be for nothing.

“I’ve tried with Hook in the past,” Regina said. “We don’t get along and I don’t see us ever getting along. I assumed I would never have to see him after we got back from Neverland except in passing. You dating him is… a wrench in that plan.”

“Can’t you try again?” Emma asked. “For me?”

“I don’t think so,” Regina said, even though she felt horrible for saying as much given the look the other woman was giving her at that moment. Even if it was her own face that was twisted in a mix of hope and desperation, Regina couldn’t help but be a little swayed by it. “He’s a whole other beast.”

Emma sighed.

“Fine,” she said. “Fine, but I don’t want you fighting with him in my body again. I want to get back into my own body and slip right back into being in a good relationship with him.”

“Was it really good?” Regina asked dryly. “He seems to think he owns you.”

“He’s jealous,” Emma said. “It’s different.”

“Jealousy and possessiveness go hand in hand.”

“He’s not possessive,” Emma said firmly. “He just gets wigged out by stuff sometimes. I just do my best to keep him from getting freaked out and he’s actually a really good man.”

“He’s not good enough for you,” Regina said before she could stop herself, and she saw the surprise in Emma’s gaze.

“What does that mean?” Emma asked.

“It means… that you’re… well, you’re _you_ ,” Regina said. “You’re the Savior. But beyond that, you’re a hard worker, strong, self-sufficient, smart, beautiful, a good mother, a good friend… What you see in the pirate I’ll never understand.”

“You’re just saying that because you don’t like him.”

“No, I’m saying it because it’s true,” Regina said.

They sat in silence, both staring at each other as if they were expecting the other to lash out for some reason or other. Regina wished she’d never said anything because what she’d said came dangerously close to admitting she had some kind of feelings for the blonde, and Emma wished Regina had never said anything like that because it brought up an intense amount of longing that Regina meant those words to be for something other than a judgment of Killian.

“I’ll be kinder to him if I see him,” Regina said after clearing her throat, hating the long silence. “If he tries anything again I’m not going to let him though. I don’t want to kiss him or be held by him. I’ll try to be gentler about that rejection if it comes to it.”

“If we’re stuck like this for more than a week can we consider telling people?” Emma asked. “It’ll be embarrassing but it’ll take some of the stress away. I’ll tell them all what I told Henry, that it’s my fault and it’s my fault we can’t get back to normal. I just don’t want him to get upset—or my parents or anyone.”

“If you feel like we have to,” Regina said. “I’d prefer to keep it quiet, but if it really gets to be too long and we have to think about explaining it, we will. I’d prefer it if we kept it to the people who need to know though. Your parents and boyfriend can know, but I don’t want someone like Happy chattering away about it.

“Thank you,” Emma said. “And if we end up not being able to switch back for longer than we thought and if it all comes out, I’ll figure something out with him if I stay in your body.”

“You won’t mind it, not being with him in… _that_ way for a while?” Regina asked.

“After what you told me?” Emma asked. “Of course I won’t mind. And besides, it’s not like it’s the only thing I want to do with him. I like him for more than just sex.”

“He always seems after just that,” Regina observed.

“He likes it,” Emma said with a shrug.

Regina’s brow quirked just slightly.

“And do you?” she asked.

“Not every time can blow a girl away the way it can a guy, you know?” Emma said honestly. “He enjoys it and it makes him happy, but some of the time it kind of just feels like I’m along for the ride.”

“Some of the time?”

“Most of the time,” Emma said sheepishly. “Don’t you dare say anything to anyone about that though. His ego wouldn’t be able to handle that.”

“Men’s egos tend not to be able to handle something like that,” Regina said with a laugh. She couldn’t deny that she was endlessly pleased with the idea that Hook wasn’t satisfying Emma most of the time. She didn’t know that she’d do any better, but it delighted her.

She tried to shake that thought off as she always did. Emma was in a relationship. Although… Emma apparently liked her. Maybe if it didn’t work out with Hook she might be interested in being more than friends? Regina didn’t see why that would be a problem. Unless the feelings had already passed, which was entirely possible.

Realizing that sitting back and hoping her friend’s relationship didn’t last for her own benefit wasn’t exactly the kindest thing in the world, Regina hurried on.

“Well however good it is with him, I do have a problem with you having sex with your boyfriend while Henry is around,” Regina said.

“What?” Emma asked, her eyes wide.

“You slept with him last night, didn’t you?” Regina asked. “He said he ‘blew your mind’ last night.”

Emma’s face turned bright red.

“Yeah, we had sex,” Emma said, unable to look Regina in the face. “But it’s not like we did it with Henry right next to us. It was quick and quiet. I’m not trying to scar the kid.”

“Regardless, I’d prefer it if you only did that kind of thing when there was an actual wall separating you all,” Regina said. “When Graham came over we had the entire hallway with multiple walls separating my room from Henry’s, and he only came over when Henry was asleep.”

“It wasn’t like I really _wanted_ to do that with my kid just down the steps,” Emma said with a roll of her eyes.

That set of warning bells in Regina’s head and she was about to say something when Emma realized what she’d said.

“It was consensual, don’t worry,” she hurried to say. “I just don’t want you thinking it was my idea. I’ll talk to Killian about it though. You’ve got a point. I told him a while ago we probably shouldn’t but sometimes it’s just easier to avoid the fight.”

Regina frowned at that.

“It seems like a lot of your relationship is you trying to keep him happy,” Regina said.

“Isn’t every relationship?” Emma asked pointedly. “You’re always trying to keep your partner happy when you’re with them. That’s a thing.”

“Yes, but—“

“No buts, Regina,” Emma said. “I don’t want to talk about that anymore. I’m happy with him. That’s it. I’m a big girl who can handle herself and make her own decisions.”

“Okay, fine,” Regina said, holding up her hands a little in surrender before dropping them again. “But what I said about him not being good enough for you still stands.”

“Whatever. Is there anything else we should talk about?”

“Sleeping arrangements,” Regina said. “I know that I said that I would let you have some down time by yourself but I’d like to be close by when we’re sleeping.”

“What for?”

“My own peace of mind for one,” Regina admitted. “But I’d also like to be close to you in case anything happens. If one of us starts losing control of the other’s magic we should be close to each other.”

“We’ll be asleep, Regina,” Emma pointed out.

“I’d just prefer to be close,” Regina said.

Whereas earlier the fact that Regina had wanted to be so close as to be breathing down her neck all the time had bothered Emma, the suggestion didn’t seem quite so ridiculous now. She nodded a little.

“Fine,” she said. “But I sleep on the left side of the bed.”

“That’s perfectly fine because I sleep on the right,” Regina answered with a small smile.

“Okay, cool,” Emma said, answering Regina’s smile with one of her own. “It’ll be like a sleepover or something.”

Regina laughed outright at that.

“In a way,” Regina said, grinning. “A very strange sleepover, but a sleepover nonetheless.”

“Can I take off the ass load of make up you put on me now?” Emma asked hopefully, and when Regina nodded, Emma headed for the vanity. She plopped down in the seat and peered at the various jars, searching for a make up remover.

She realized after a second that Regina was directly behind her and when she glanced at the other woman in the mirror she saw Regina looked anxious once more.

“What’s wrong?” Emma asked.

“Can I do it?” Regina asked.

“Do what?”

“Take off the make up for you.”

“What do you not want me to see, Regina?”

“Just let me do it.”

Emma was confused as anything but the look on the other woman’s face had her caving. She nodded and turned away from the mirror, keeping her face towards Regina. The relief was visible on Regina’s face and Emma was torn between finding out what exactly the issue was and respecting Regina’s privacy.

Regina was quick about the whole process, getting the heaps of make up off of Emma’s face. Emma felt a bit like her skin could breathe again, but then Regina was slathering on moisturizer and other such nonsense that Emma had never really bothered with. It didn’t sit so heavily on Emma’s face, but she wondered what the point of it all was.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Regina admitted when she’d finished placing the last cream onto her face.

“I’ll wait to change into pajamas until you get back,” Emma said, and smiled at the grateful expression she saw flicker across Regina’s face.

“Thank you.”

It took only a few minutes for Regina to return, though she looked embarrassed as anything.

“That’s going to take some getting used to,” Regina said, and Emma laughed at the pinkness in her cheeks.

“Did you peek?”

“Of course not!” Regina replied, sounding scandalized. “I would never!”

Emma laughed again.

“I didn’t think you did, but you’re acting so weird.”

“Forgive me if I find it a bit odd to pee from someone else’s body,” Regina grumbled.

“Now can we change into pajamas?” Emma asked.

Regina nodded, and as with before, Emma changed quickly into a new outfit while staring Regina straight in the eye, never letting her hands drift no matter how badly she wanted to explore the smooth skin. Regina had let her wear some of her own pajamas from the apartment, which was nice. Regina opted for her own pajamas as well, and she changed the way she asked Emma to, though Emma didn’t really care quite so much about Regina seeing anything. Still, when Regina changed she made sure she did so without looking and without touching, and Emma couldn’t help but be touched by the fact that Regina wanted to respect her privacy so much.

Seeing herself in a set of silk pajamas was a bit odd, but Emma kind of liked it and considered buying some for herself. She couldn’t deny a bit of the appeal was seeing herself in _Regina’s_ pajamas, but she forced herself not to pay attention to it.

“I like to read in bed after Henry’s gone to sleep,” Regina said, indicating what she’d like to do with the rest of the night.

“I just fuck around on my phone,” Emma admitted. “I can do that in bed, so let’s go for it.”

A few minutes later found them both settled on either side of the bed, both under the covers, and both doing their own thing. It was odd, but neither wanted to really draw attention to the oddness of it and interrupt the tranquility of it. The situation was bizarre, but it was so calm and so… natural in a way that they just settled themselves in.

Regina was glad to have gotten as much as she had off of her chest. She didn’t tell anyone about her past or her thoughts the way she’d just told Emma, and it was a relief. She’d worried what Emma’s reaction would be, but it had been so supportive and calm that she wondered why she’d ever worried.

Emma on the other hand was happy to understand the other woman a bit better. She’d never known her half of the story, but it made much more sense now as to why Regina had become the woman she’d been.

The fact that they’d also ironed out a few more things about their situation made it easier for both of them, and when they eventually grew tired and started to drift off to sleep, it didn’t seem quite as odd to either woman to turn out the lights and snuggle down into the covers next to each other.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you remember when I said I'd possibly have some spotty updates? Yeah, sorry for the four month delay. 
> 
> A combination of being in a car accident (not very serious but it was my first so I was very shaken), suddenly working three jobs (one full-time, two part-time) instead of being continuing to be unemployed, and general depression (flared up pretty badly lately) has kept me from doing pretty much anything creative these last few months. Things are starting to get somewhat back on track and I finally picked away at this chapter. 
> 
> I'm going to set aside writing time to try to keep up with this now and hope to post weekly again. I'm not sure if I'll go for Saturdays or Sundays, but I'll decide by next weekend when I'm going to post! 
> 
> Again, very sorry for the wait, and I hope that those of you who are sticking with this enjoy it!

When the alarm blared across the bed from her, Emma couldn't help a long groan. She didn't know what time it was but it felt too early. The shuffling body next to her lifted up and turned off the clock before collapsing back into the mattress. 

Without thinking, Emma reached for the other person, assuming it was Killian and pulling him towards her. She was surprised with a fist suddenly colliding with her face and she scrambled backwards. She let go of whoever it was and her hands covered her face to protect it.

"What the hell?" she croaked. 

"Shit! Emma!"

She heard her own voice and the events of the previous day came back to her. 

Regina was back on the bed in a flash, pulling back the covers to try to get a clear look at Emma. The shock of the warmth of the blankets being immediately replaced by the chill of the air wasn't helping anything and Emma groaned. 

"I'm so sorry," Regina said, her hands fluttering nervously around Emma's hair as if she was going to stroke it like she would Henry when he was hurt. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Emma said, rubbing her cheek hard like it would help. "Definitely awake now."

"I'm sorry," Regina said again, her face drawn in concern. "Can I get you anything?"

"I'm fine, Regina," she said. "Calm down. I got confused and thought you were Killian."

"I shouldn't have punched you though."

"I blasted you into a wall and burned your hand yesterday," Emma pointed out. "Besides, I already feel okay."

"But--"

"At least this time you didn't punch me intentionally," Emma interrupted. 

"Don't remind me of that," Regina said, pinching the bridge of her nose. "I'd rather forget we ever did that to one another."

"You probably won't," Emma warned her. "Henry knows we did that."

"He what?" Regina demanded, her eyes going wide as she dropped her hand to stare at the other woman. 

"I told him," the sheriff said with a shrug. "He was saying that your bark was worse than your bite and I told him that's not necessarily true."

"Great," Regina said. "Now my son thinks I'm some sort of insane WWE fighter."

"Nah, he still thinks you're lame," Emma shot back. 

Regina's eyes narrowed a little. 

"Regardless of that, I am sorry I punched you," she said. "I didn't remember you were there. You didn't touch me all night and I forgot."

"Are you okay though?" Emma asked. "That was quite a wake up for me so it must've been pretty bad for you."

"I haven't slept in the same bed as anyone since your grandfather," Regina admitted. "It startled me."

"But are you okay?" Emma asked again. 

"I'm fine," the other woman reassured her. "I was startled but I'm fine now."

"As long as you're sure," Emma said, starting to get up. 

She stretched hugely, unaware that Regina was watching her curiously. Regina couldn't help but admire the fact that Emma was wearing her own pajamas, which put Regina's own body into Emma's pajamas. She rather liked the look of it though she didn't dare say it out loud, and when Emma turned to face her again Regina was looking away. 

"So what's your morning routine?" Emma asked. 

"I usually shower first thing, then get Henry up," she said. "He's been waking up later and later the closer he gets to being a teenager so I usually have to pull him out of bed--especially on a school day."

"We're not showering, are we?" Emma asked curiously. 

Regina hesitated a long time before shrugging her shoulders. 

"Not right now," she said. "Maybe when we get Henry off to school we can see how we feel about that—“ Emma understood it was more going to be focused on how Regina felt about that, though she couldn’t deny it was going to be a bit odd to shower Regina’s body. “—But for now let's just focus on getting breakfast so he can eat first thing when he wakes up."

Emma was amazed Regina was even entertaining the idea of a shower but after the previous night she felt like maybe it was going to get easier from here on out. They had their rules and agreements and were on better footing. Now they just had to switch back. 

She followed Regina down to the kitchen and set about trying to help prepare a breakfast. Regina began making French toast and Emma found a pack of bacon that she started on. While the French toast was cooking, Regina began beating eggs to make scrambled eggs for the three of them, effortlessly switching between preparing the two foods. The bacon was finished just as Regina finished with her preparations, and Emma discovered blueberries in the fridge. 

"I'll plate it all if you'd like to go get Henry?" Regina suggested. 

Emma nodded and headed up for their son, breathing deeply as she drank in the smell of the meal they'd put together. She hustled up the stairs, eager to get to dig into breakfast. 

When she reached her son's door she knocked but opened it. 

"Hey, Henry," she said cheerily enough. "Time to get up."

The lump on the bed she assumed was her child groaned and shifted but made no move to get up.

"Helloooo. Anyone there? Your mom and I made a delicious breakfast. She even let me help. Come on, it's time to get up and at 'em! No sleeping in allowed!"

Henry slowly peeled back the covers just enough to squint at her. 

"Are you still Emma?" he asked. 

"Yeah, still me in here, kid," Emma said with a chuckle. 

"Then you can't say anything about sleeping in." He pulled the sheet back over his head and tried to settle. 

"Hey!" Emma protested. "I only sleep in when it's the weekend!" 

She went to the bed and pulled the sheet, yanking it away from his head and pulling it away from him before he could grab it again. He curled into a ball and tried to block her out, but she didn't let up in the slightest, poking him and cajoling him and pestering him until he finally got up. 

"Fine, fine!" Henry said sourly, heaving himself to his feet. "I'm getting up."

"Your mom and I made breakfast," Emma said, looking positively delighted for being able to drag Henry out of bed, even if it was a bit rough and cruel. "Come on, kid. Most important meal of the day."

Henry plodded along behind Emma and they got to the dining room as Regina was finishing up pouring glasses of orange juice for everyone. 

"How early did you wake up that you got all this together?" Henry asked, nearly collapsing into his chair. 

"Not that early," Regina said. "We thought you might like it. A good way to start a new week."

Henry nodded and blearily picked up his fork. He almost started to eat before he remembered his manners and paused, waiting for both his mothers to sit and start before he did so. Regina practically beamed at him. 

Breakfast was quiet as none of them really had anything much to talk about. Both women were certain Henry would have more to say if he wasn't half asleep, but as it was he mostly just ate, occasionally grumbling a polite request or a thank you. Regina was certain he'd gotten that part of his personality from Emma.

"Go wash up and get ready to go," Regina told Henry as he finished up his meal. "I'm going to drive you to school as soon as you're set."

"'Kay, Mom," he said. He took his own plate as well as both his mothers' plates and brought them into the kitchen. Regina heard the sounds of the dishwasher being opened and plates being put in, then heard the boy close it and stumble back towards the stairs. 

She grinned at Emma. 

"He was never such a bear in the morning before Neverland," she said. 

"I think he's finally hitting the teenager attitude."

"Gods help us all," Regina said, touching her pinky to her thumb and holding the middle three fingers up by her temple before flicking them upwards. It was a gesture that had confused Emma for a while as everyone in Storybrooke seemed to know it and do it. She'd finally asked her mother about it after Snow had done it one night when they were up late talking. It hadn't ever occurred to Emma that there were different belief systems in the other realm, but the little sign Regina had just made was apparently a bit like doing the sign of the cross. Not that Emma had much personal familiarity with religious habits in the non-magical realm, but it was the closest comparison she could draw. Regardless, it seemed that there was a belief in three major deities that attended to the happenings in the other realm and the flicking of the three fingers from the temple to the sky was considered what Emma referred to as "chucking prayers to the heavens." That phrase hadn't yet caught on and wasn't exactly appreciated by anyone in town but her and Henry. 

"Don't do that in public," Emma said, gesturing to Regina's hand as she dropped it back to her side. 

"What do you mean?" 

"The little Enchanted Forest prayer thing," Emma said. "I don't do that. I don't even do non-magical realm prayer stuff."

"I hadn't even thought of that," Regina admitted. "Thank you for pointing it out."

"Are you taking him to school or are we taking him?" Emma asked. 

"We can do it together if you'd like."

"Sounds good as long as I don't have to get dolled up."

"You can wear a coat or something over that and stay in the car to hide the pajama bottoms if you want," Regina said, figuring the path of least resistance would help her to get through the morning. She was willing to try to trust Emma a little more but she wasn't quite ready to be so far away just yet as to leave her at the mansion. Luckily Emma seemed to take it as an opportunity to spend more time with Henry than another thing preventing her from getting her 'alone time'. Regina hoped Emma wouldn't mind giving her a bit more time to get used to that idea before she asked for it. 

"I'll clean up the rest of breakfast," Emma said, getting up to do just that. 

Regina set about putting together a lunch for their son as Emma rinsed the dishes and placed them in the dishwasher.

“You still make him lunch?” Emma asked as she glanced at the other woman every once in a while.

“Of course I do,” Regina said. “I want to be sure he eats well.”

“I just give him ten bucks and he buys lunch.”

Regina raised a brow as she placed freshly cut apple slices into a small container and then into the lunchbox on the counter.

“He can make his own decisions about what he eats,” Emma excused. “He’s growing up.”

“I know, but he’s never objected to the lunches and he gives suggestions for what he’d like in his lunch for the next school day,” Regina said.

Emma couldn’t help the confused look she shot the other woman but after a moment just went on with clearing up breakfast. When she finished, Regina was done with putting together a lunch of apple slices, fresh carrots, and a tuna fish sandwich. Regina had slipped a chocolate chip cookie in as well and she closed the lid with a small smile.

“You get off on that kind of thing, don’t you?” Emma asked. Her tone wasn’t accusatory or cruel, and the smile she wore told Regina that it was meant almost affectionately.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Regina said, her fond smile fading to one of slight embarrassment.

“You just really love being his mom,” Emma shot back.

“Of course I do,” Regina said. “He’s an amazing child and being a mother is something I always wanted to do even if I felt I couldn’t.”

“Why couldn’t you?” Emma asked, unable to help the curiosity.

“I took a potion to make sure I couldn’t,” Regina admitted. “I wanted to be sure I didn’t have a child in my marriage because I was afraid my mother would use any child I had to try to consolidate her own power. Not to mention I didn’t particularly want a baby with Leopold.”

“And instead you got his great grandkid as your son,” Emma said with a laugh.

“Don’t remind me,” Regina said with a roll of her eyes. “I’m raising the grandchild of the Dark One and great grandchild of my late husband as my son. The family tree in this town is absurd.”

Emma laughed a little more, but paused.

“You don’t mind it, do you?” she asked. “That he’s Leopold’s great grandkid?”

“Why would I?” Regina asked.

“Well you weren’t exactly fond of my mother,” Emma pointed out.

“Your mother was a special case,” Regina admitted.

Emma could tell she was treading lightly and said, “Tell me why—and tell me honestly.”

“She was… horribly self-righteous as a child,” Regina said. “She was only a few years younger than I was but when I was married to Leopold it was almost unbearable how badly she wanted me to be her mother. I was barely out of my own childhood and she was trying to get me to be the mom of an almost-eleven-year-old. Imagine if Henry as he is now showed up when you were seventeen and demanded you be his mother.”

“I couldn’t handle the thought of him being a baby,” Emma said honestly. “I don’t blame you on that front.”

“In any case, Henry being Leopold’s great grandson means nothing to me because he’s my son first,” Regina said. “I raised him and loved him long before I learned of his blood relations, and even knowing now who he came from doesn’t change that for me."

Emma nodded, glad that the knowledge of who Henry came from hadn't affected how Regina felt for him. She hadn't thought it had but the confirmation of it was a relief.

The boy in question came back down the stairs a few moments later, his hair wet but brushed back with his bag was slung over one shoulder. He was wearing a plaid shirt and Regina noted that the sleeves of it were just a hair too short for his arms--he must have been going through another growth spurt that she hadn't noticed, but she would deal with that after everything had blown over a bit. 

"Are we taking the bug?" he asked. 

"Yep," Emma replied. "You don't mind both of us dropping you off, do you?"

"As long as I don't have to sit in anyone's lap again," he replied with a bit of a grin, though both women could tell he was relieved. 

"I promise, we'll use Emma's car until this is fixed," Regina told him with a smile. "Then things can go back to normal."

They loaded into the car, Regina in the driver's seat and Emma in the passenger's. Henry had protested having to sit in back for only a moment before he gave in, responding more to his true adoptive mother's arched brow than the one Emma attempted from Regina's body. Regina still managed to seem every bit the intimidating Mayor she had been even if she was trapped in the Sheriff's body. 

When they pulled up to the school, Regina got out of the car out of habit. She always left it up to Henry whether he wanted a hug or not before he left, but ever since Neverland he'd gone out of his way for one every day. Emma--not wanting to be left out--got out of the car as well, forgetting about the fact that she was now showing off to the world a very dressed-down Regina Mills with her pajama pants still on. Henry hugged both of his mothers then, and when he turned for the school Emma went back for the car.

Regina hesitated a moment before saying, "I forgot to tell him something--I'll be right back," through the open car window. Before Emma had a chance to question it, Regina hurried after their son. 

"Henry, wait!" Regina called as she moved after him. 

Henry didn't need to be told twice and looked back at his adoptive mother, his expression curious but indulgent. 

"What's wrong, Mom?" he asked. "You look funny."

"I'll be sure to tell Emma that you think she looks funny," Regina quipped. 

Henry laughed and Regina seemed delighted by it. 

"Nothing is wrong," she said. "I just wanted to ask you... at night when you go to bed, do you want me to say good night to you?"

"Of course I do," he said. "We say good night every night."

"I mean... do you mind that I still... Emma said that she doesn't say good night the way I do." She made sure to drop her voice so no one would overhear her comments about Emma, knowing it would sound strange from the Sheriff's body. She made sure to keep quiet as she added, "She doesn't tuck you in," to spare him any embarrassment if anyone overheard that.

"She never has," Henry said, not lowering his volume at all. "She tried a few times but she wasn't good at it."

"What does that mean?"

"She's my mom, but she never tucked me in as a kid and she doesn't know how to," Henry said. "It's weird when she does it. Neither of us liked how awkward it was so she stopped doing it."

"But you don't mind me doing it?" Regina asked. "Even though you're getting older?"

"I might have if... if the whole... thing hadn't happened," he said. "But I like you being there. I like when you do that."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, Mom," he said with a smile. "I'm sure."

"And your lunches--"

"You make good food." 

Relief spread through the woman and she nodded. 

"I just wanted to be sure," she said. "You're growing up and I don't want to make things harder for you."

Henry beamed at her and said, "I love you." He leaned in and gave her a tight hug around the waist, letting her wrap her arms around him for a moment as she lowered her head to kiss the top of his head and caught just the tiniest whiff of the smell coming off of her son's hair. Even when he was freshly showered she could still smell the smallest hint of his own scent. 

She realized how weird it must have been but he didn't seem worried by it. He knew his mother clung to him in a way a lot of the other boys wouldn't allow but he could never deny he was a bit of a mama's boy. He'd been teased about it by the other kids but he'd gone through so much with both of his mothers that he tried not to let it bother him. 

"All right, time to go," Regina said, pulling back a little bit. "Your mother and I have to figure some stuff out and you have to get to class."

"Kay, Mom," he said. "I'll see you tonight after my appointment."

"Can you get to Archie's okay on your own?"

"Yeah, I'll be fine," he assured her. "I'll call you while I'm walking over to his office."

"Thank you."

"Love you!" he said as he turned to go. 

"I love you, too," she said, beaming at him as she watched him go. 

With Henry going to a therapy appointment that night she'd have plenty of time to work on getting control of Emma's magic and get the two of them switched back to normal before she had to worry about getting dinner ready. She headed back to the car and slipped into the driver's side. 

Emma caught sight of the look on Regina’s face and Regina only just spotted the other woman’s expression as Emma turned to face forward again.

“What’s that look for?” Regina demanded.

“Nothing.”

“That isn’t nothing.”

“It is—“

“Tell me what you’re smirking about or you’re walking back to the house, Miss Swan.”

“A threat _and_ you called me Miss Swan?” Emma asked. “You must be serious.”

“ _Emma_ ,” Regina said.

Emma couldn’t help but grin now.

“It’s just nice seeing you and him,” the woman finally answered. “I like it.”

“What does that mean?”

“That… that he’s happy and you’re happy and that makes me happy,” Emma said, giving a half-hearted shrug.

“I’ve never known that you were so sweet,” Regina said a bit dryly, if only to hide the embarrassment she felt at that. She knew why Emma liked seeing her happy and it only made Regina balk all the more. She didn't know that it was appropriate for Emma to enjoy her happiness in that way. 

"I'm filled with hidden mysteries," the Sheriff shot back. "Can we get going though? We've got to start our day now. I want to get to practicing. And you mentioned the possibility of a shower."

"I did?" Regina asked, even as she turned the key and began to drive back towards the house. 

"A lot earlier," Emma admitted. "And I'd really like to if you're willing to let me. I don't feel right until I'm showered in the mornings."

Regina frowned a little but it wasn't in unhappiness—just thought. Emma was silent as Regina mulled over her options and when the other woman finally nodded once, Emma nearly rejoiced. 

"We can do that," Regina said. 

"Are you sure?" Emma asked carefully. "I want you to be sure."

"We've managed to respect one another's bodies well enough thus far," Regina admitted. "I'll be okay with it as long as we're quick about it."

"Of course," Emma said. "You can even climb in with me if you'd like."

She meant it as an offer to ensure Regina wouldn't be worried but the way Regina blushed had Emma certain she'd taken it a different way entirely. 

"You know, to be sure I'm not doing anything you don't like," she rushed to explain. "So you'll be comfortable with me and all that."

"No, no, I get what you meant," Regina said, though she didn't look Emma in the face. "I—I—won't you feel strange about it?"

"I mean it's your body," Emma reasoned. "Nothing you haven't seen before. But if you want to take separate showers I get that, too. I just want the option to be open so you're comfortable."

The awkward silence that followed the offer weighed on both women so heavily it was nearly painful. Regina cursed Emma for offering something she would truly have wanted if circumstances were different. If they'd been in their own bodies and if the damned pirate hadn't been in the way—

No, she wouldn't allow herself to think that. Regina turned her attention back to the road and forced herself to focus.

Meanwhile, Emma was cursing herself for embarrassing Regina. She felt terrible for putting her in that position that she'd been able to misinterpret what she'd said, and Emma vowed to make a more conscious effort not to do it again. It seemed like every two seconds she was putting her foot in her mouth. 

"So what were you and Henry talking about?" Emma asked in an effort to shift the energy back towards something more neutral. 

"I was just checking in with him," Regina said, staring at the road with perhaps more focus than absolutely necessary. 

"About?"

"My parenting style."

Emma laughed but realized after the fact that Regina was serious. 

"Wait, what about your parenting style are you running past the kid?" she asked. 

"You've mentioned that you do things differently with him," Regina said. "I just wanted to be sure that I'm living up to any standards that he's set for me. I don't want him begrudging me for how I treat him if he prefers the way you treat him."

Emma looked puzzled but nodded slowly. 

"Okay..." she said. "And?"

"He's happy with me," Regina said with a shrug. 

"Why did you even ask him?" Emma questioned. 

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that anyone can see how he lights up around you. Especially after Neverland. He loves you."

"I know that, but I'd rather not be found lacking in any respect—especially not motherhood."

"I don't think a single person has ever been able to find you lacking in any way," Emma said, and Regina was thrown off by how easily she complimented her. "It was infuriating when I first met you. I wanted to find something wrong with you but other than the fact that you were psychotic you were perfect."

"Being 'psychotic' makes you far from perfect," Regina pointed out. 

"Yeah but you know what I mean," Emma said. "You had the house and the car and the kid and the career... You had it all. You were perfect.”

“I looked perfect you mean,” Regina corrected, sounding almost idle. “I got very good at seeming perfect in my life. It’s very easy to pretend to be that.”

“I guess,” Emma said with a shrug. “I’ve just never managed it. I was always just trying to get by.”

“You didn’t have magic to back you up and make everything work out.”

“True.”

Regina chanced a glance across the car and saw Emma smiling a little. It sat well with the Mayor and she turned on to Mifflin, pulling in her own driveway a few moments later.

“So how d’you wanna to do this?” Emma asked her as they got out of the car and headed for the front door. “Do you want to go first? Second? I figure if you want we can hang in the bathroom while the other showers.”

“You can go first if you’d like,” Regina said.

“Awesome. I’ll be quick, I promise.”

Regina nodded and unlocked the door. She took her time about it, building herself up to what was about to happen. She couldn’t fault Emma for wanting a shower considering neither of them had showered the day before. Regina typically washed herself in the morning as apparently did Emma, which meant that both of them hadn’t cleaned themselves in roughly two days. She wanted a shower as much as Emma did, and she had already agreed to it.

Besides all that, she had to trust the other woman. They’d laid it all out and had a good conversation that had led to them understanding one another better. They were going to respect one another through this and Emma was going to do her best to keep Regina from feeling uncomfortable.

She led the way up the stairs to her bedroom, stopping in her closet before she went to the bathroom to get clothes for the other woman. Emma grabbed clothing from her bag and together they went into the bathroom. Regina grabbed an extra towel and robe from the linen closet and looked around a little nervously.

“Hey,” Emma said, and when Regina looked over she smiled at her. “It’s up to you what happens here. I can go another day without a shower if you really want me to.”

Somehow, the offer made Regina more at ease with Emma, and she smiled back at the other woman.

“No you can’t,” she said. “I won’t let you wander around town making people think that I’ve allowed myself to start stinking.”

“I don’t smell _that_ bad right now,” Emma said. “You barely sweat and don’t have B.O. It’s just typical two-days-with-no-shower stuff, you know?”

“Because I have magic,” Regina admitted with a sheepish grin.

“Wait, really?”

“Yes. There are potions for that kind of thing. Once magic came back to the town I started brewing what I could.”

Emma laughed.

“You’re ridiculous.”

Regina couldn’t help but be slightly embarrassed and she put on a show of primness.

“B.O. isn’t mayoral,” she said.

Emma rolled her eyes.

“Well whatever your reasons, you don’t smell awful,” Emma said. “I _could_ go another day without a shower. I don’t want to though.”

“Fair,” Regina said. She was much more at ease now that they’d been able to joke around here, and she went to the shower. “Do you like it hot?”

“Love it hot,” Emma said, waiting for Regina to turn back before she began to strip.

“All my soaps and shampoos are in here,” Regina said as she held her hand under the stream to test the temperature. “Try not to use too much of it—it’s expensive.”

“As if you can’t magic up more of it.”

“The point still stands.”

Satisfied the water was ready, Regina faced Emma once more. Emma could see the nervousness returning and didn’t let it go too far.

“What are you going to use?” she asked, staring Regina in the eye as she started undressing, making sure the other woman could see she wasn’t doing anything untoward. “All your soaps and shampoos will be fine on me in your body, but if you use them on you in _my_ body people might ask questions.”

“We’ll say what we’ve said to your boyfriend and parents,” Regina said. “That Henry asked for you—your body at least—to spend the night here. We’ll say you borrowed my shampoo.”

“I guess that could work.”

Emma moved towards the shower and opened the glass door, letting some of the steam out. She couldn’t help but notice Regina’s appraising gaze on her—or rather, on the Mayoral body.

“You good?” she asked before she stepped into the water. She hadn’t looked down or touched too much, had she?

“I’m just giving myself a once over,” Regina admitted, looking a little sheepish once more. Emma was starting to find that a sheepish Regina was one of her favorite kinds of Regina—she was cute when she was embarrassed.

“And what do you think?”

“That I could cut down on the sweets.”

“What sweets do you even eat?” Emma asked with a laugh. “Your body’s fine, Regina.”

“I eat my fair share,” Regina shot back.

“Does your weight have any bearing on who you are as a person?” Emma asked pointedly.

“No, but—“

“But nothing,” Emma said. “You’re fine, Regina. You look great and I would still think you were a good person even if you looked like Igor from Young Frankenstein.”

With that she walked under the spray and heaved a sigh of relief as the hot water nearly scalded her skin.

“Have you ever seen a movie that came out after 1990?” Regina asked.

“What do you mean?” Emma asked.

“You watch a lot of old movies,” Regina said.

“But not exclusively old movies.”

“But a lot of them.”

“They’re fun.”

“Clearly if you’ve watched so many of them.”

“My favorite foster home was with this couple who were huge movie buffs,” Emma said with a laugh. “They had a huge collection of stuff from all sorts of time periods in cinema history and this huge theater with the works—plush couches, a giant TV, even a popcorn machine. When I was moved from their place into a group home I kept up the movie thing and kept looking into old movies.”

“So it’s a reminder of a good time,” Regina said, eyes on the other woman as the steam fogged up the glass. She could see Emma was rinsing something out of her hair, and she was glad to see that Emma reached for a loofah—it would mean indirect contact and Emma wouldn’t actually be touching her body while she washed it.

“Yeah, I guess,” Emma said. “I also just like movies in general. Just getting to zone out and wrap up in a different world is a pretty good time in and of itself.”

Regina stared for another moment before pulling her eyes away from the fogged up glass.

“Why did you leave that foster home?” Regina asked curiously. Emma was silent for so long that Regina tacked on a quick, “If you don’t mind telling of course.”

“No, I don’t mind,” Emma said. “I was ten when I was with them so didn’t know until my social worker told me when I was older, but apparently they smoked a lot.”

“Don’t you think you would have noticed the smell of cigarettes even if you were ten?” Regina asked.

“They smoked pot, Regina,” Emma shot back, unable to help her grin. “If they’d have smoked cigarettes they might have been told off but that’s not enough to get your foster kid taken away. But it wasn’t just that they smoked it—they sold it, and the husband got caught selling once. It got back to my social worker and I had to be taken out of the house.”

“That’s horrible,” Regina said, her brow drawn in sympathy. “They took care of your otherwise, didn’t they?”

“Yeah, well enough. I was fed, clothed, sheltered, and told I was worth something pretty much every day.”

“Then they should have been allowed to keep you in the house until you aged out or got adopted.”

“Do my ears deceive me or are you sticking up for a couple of stoners?” Emma asked, and Regina could hear the delight in the other woman’s voice.

“Of course I’m sticking up for a couple of stoners when they were good to you and you got the short end of the stick.”

“You don’t think they’re terrible for smoking and selling the devil’s lettuce?” Emma teased.

“I don’t approve of that in the slightest but none of you deserved that just because they got high and made some money on the side.”

“I was angry about that, too,” Emma admitted. “But I’m over it now.”

“Think about how different your adolescence could have been if you’d been with them though,” Regina pointed out. “You said they were your favorite family and that they took care of you. Maybe you would have avoided all of the hardships you encountered if you had stayed with them.”

“Maybe,” Emma said. “I wouldn’t ever have had Henry though. Or maybe I would have but he would be different. Kind of like what you said in Neverland—I can’t regret what brought me to Henry.”

Regina beamed as she turned to look back at the shower in time for the water to turn off. She was surprised by the fact that Emma was apparently already done—it felt like no time at all had passed, and Regina wasn’t sure if it was because they’d had a good conversation, or because Emma had hurried. Regardless, Regina reached for a towel and held it up as the glass door swung open and Emma hurried to wrap the towel around her naked body.

“I should get someone to have a towel ready for me all the time,” Emma joked as she tucked the corner of the towel in to make sure it held itself up. “No more towel hooks for me—I’m going to hire someone.”

“I’m sure you could convince the pirate,” Regina said. “He’s got the hook built in so when you’re done you can hang the towel right back up.”

Emma nearly cackled at that, letting out an exclamation of, “Rude!” as if to try to hide that she’d found it so funny.

Regina couldn’t help but grin. She knew that she wasn’t exactly known as a funny person—dry, sarcastic, maybe credited with a bitter sense of humor if someone was being generous—but making Emma laugh was delightful. Even in Regina’s body, the mayor could see all the tell tale signs of Emma’s real enthusiasm when it came to something she found genuinely funny. Her head tilted back just the slightest bit, her nose crinkled, and she seemed lighter than air. It was a good look on her, even while occupying another’s body.

“All right, Seinfeld, your turn for a shower,” Emma said. “You jerk.”

“Am I wrong?” Regina shot back, not even playing at an innocent tone. “I suppose he could be useful for _some_ things.”

“He’s plenty useful,” Emma said.

“For?”

“For being there for me when I need him,” Emma said.

“So am I,” Regina countered. “Next?”

“For… making me laugh.”

“I just did that easily. Next.”

“He’s smart.”

“We both know what I’m about to say here.”

Emma grinned and ducked her head in admission—Regina had a point.

“He’s really nice to look at.”

“As if I’m some kind of troll,” Regina scoffed, a little surprised by the playfulness this conversation had provoked from her.

“You were the one critiquing your appearance just a few minutes ago,” Emma pointed out.

“You were the one defending it those few minutes ago.”

“Careful, Regina, you might start sounding like you’d want me to date you instead of Hook if you keep this up,” Emma said with a wink.

Regina blushed so furiously so quickly that Emma’s joy faded in fractions of a second. Regina managed to catch a hint of hope and the quick crushing of it on the other woman’s face before Emma just looked embarrassed.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t joke like that given your—“

“No, no,” Regina said with a wave of her hand, trying a smile again though she was aware it was forced and she was aware that her face still burned bright pink. “You don’t have to worry about joking like that with me. I know it’s just jokes. You’re happy with the pirate, no matter how much I struggle to understand that concept.”

Emma looked uncertain and Regina hurried them along.

“All right, you said it’s my turn to shower,” she said, starting to undress. She looked Emma in the eye as she did so and it felt awkward after what had just transpired.

“You know you don’t have to look at me,” Emma said. “I trust you well enough.”

“I know, but I’d like to maintain that trust.”

“Have it your way.”

Regina watched Emma until she was naked and then turned to the shower. She turned on the water, mulling over what they’d just said. It was odd to her, the way they so easily bantered about the most ridiculous things, and especially how close she’d come to outright saying she would make a better partner than Hook. She tried to chalk it up to just wanting to show she was better than him in every way, but she knew she only _really_ needed to feel superior to him because Emma was in the equation.

She got into the shower, aware that Emma was silent as Regina washed herself. Regina was certain she’d never taken a faster shower in her life as she hurried to make sure that the silence didn’t need to stretch on forever. She refused to allow herself the thought that her hand could easily run across the smooth, pale skin, and she kept her eyes on the wall of the shower to avoid the temptation to look down.

When Regina emerged from the shower not even five minutes later, she reached for the towel she had hanging next to the shower door, wrapping it around her body to hide it and avoid thinking about Emma’s body after she’d practically announced candidacy as a potential lover for the Sheriff.

When she looked across the room she saw Emma standing and facing away, looking into the mirror above the sinks. She thought nothing of it until she saw the placement of Emma’s hands.

Emma had one hand gripping the towel to keep it firmly shut, but two fingers of the other hand traced across Regina’s temples, lightly touching the red marks she found on each side of her forehead.

Regina’s eyes widened.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, her voice sharper than it had been for a while around Emma.

Emma whipped around, panic flitting across her face for a second.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Don’t touch those,” Regina snapped. “Don’t even—I didn’t—“

“I didn’t think it was a big deal,” Emma said quickly, not wanting to offend Regina more than she already had—if Regina was stammering then Emma knew she had genuinely infuriated her. “I was looking at the stuff on the sink and then looked in the mirror and noticed. I didn’t think it was a bad thing, I just thought it was—“

“I would prefer you avoid harping on my imperfections, thank you,” Regina said curtly.

“Are these why you wear all that make up you made me wear yesterday?” Emma asked, clearly not willing to let it go completely when her curiosity was piqued the way it had been.

“Of course they are.” Before Emma could ask anything else, Regina ordered, “Come on. I want you dressed and made up. Now.”

Emma was confused as anything, aware she’d overstepped but not entirely sure how. She followed Regina regardless, the two of them making their way towards the walk-in closet. There was an iciness emanating from Regina that Emma didn’t like and an awkwardness in the air that neither woman really wanted.

 _And things had been going so well,_ Regina thought, cursing her luck that Emma had spotted what she’d tried to keep hidden for so long.

“Do I get to know what these marks are?” Emma tried.

“No, you don’t.”

Regina’s refusal left absolutely no room for argument. She said it so simply and said it without offering any kind of explanation as to why Emma wouldn’t get to learn what they were from. Obviously they were from something big if Regina was reacting in this way, but Emma wasn’t about to start digging when she’d already set off the mayor so badly.

Clothing was picked out and Regina dressed quickly before staring Emma down as Emma dressed as well. It wasn’t so much that Regina was staring—she was _glaring_ at the woman who inhabited her body, almost as if she would set her on fire if she could to hide whatever secret she was keeping more thoroughly.

“Sit down,” Regina ordered, her voice curt as she gestured to the vanity when they were both dressed.

Emma avoided conversation as Regina loaded up her face with what felt like pounds upon pounds of make up. She just closed her eyes and let Regina do what she liked, wishing she hadn’t been caught and thinking hard on what the marks could be. She hadn’t ever noticed them and so couldn’t figure out when they’d appeared. It was clearly something from before their switch, but how old were the marks? What had caused them? Why was Regina _so_ neurotic about them?

When Emma had been properly painted, Regina turned away and began to move towards the door.

“Come on,” she said. “I want to start practicing with your magic now. We’ve got to get back in our own bodies.”

“Regina, you know I’m sorry, right?” Emma said, hoping to get through Regina’s current haze of anger. “I didn’t realize it was something you’d be upset about me seeing.”

“Just come on, Miss Swan,” Regina said. “We’ve got a long day ahead of us at the vault.”

Emma sighed softly but went after her friend, wondering how on earth she was going to dig herself out of this hole. She’d been doing so well at being friends with the other woman. Just friends, of course—she was pleased to find she was capable of being just friends with Regina without putting pressure on her for more. Although interestingly enough it had been Regina who had been making strange hints that almost seemed like flirting that morning.

Emma supposed that didn’t matter now. She’d just have to wait for Regina to calm down and then maybe they could discuss it. In the meantime, she had dark magic to master.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, what do you know, an update that's actually posted a week after the previous update! Lots of fighting in this one because I love writing their fights--and a surprise at the end :D

The car ride over to the vault had been more than a little uncomfortable. Regina refused to look at Emma and Emma couldn’t stop thinking about what the marks could possibly be. She had never noticed them before. Regina hid them so well it was almost alarming.

If Emma were honest, it made her curious about the Mayor’s body even more so than she’d been—and she had been _very_ interested in the Mayor’s body before she had occupied it. If Regina was hiding that kind of thing that well, what else could she have up her sleeve?

When they reached the graveyard and pulled up near the vault, Regina got out of the car silently and went straight to the monument. She didn’t wait for Emma for a second, and the Sheriff hurried to catch up to her.

They entered the tomb, Regina silently directed Emma to help move the coffin aside, and they descended into the vault itself. Regina snapped her fingers idly, and when nothing happened she cursed softly. Emma assumed Regina had forgotten she couldn’t control the magic she had.

“Do you need a light?” Emma asked, trying to get Regina talking again.

Refusing to answer that, Regina simply reached into the pocket of the jeans she was wearing—which she pulled on only in order to look more like the Sheriff—and pulled out her own phone, clicking a button to fire up the screen. The Blackberry provided just enough light to see by as long as Regina held it close to whatever she needed to see. She moved into the darkened room, walking slowly and carefully, still refusing to acknowledge that the other woman had spoken.

Emma raised a brow and took out her phone, sliding the screen up and turning on the iPhone’s flashlight feature. Unlike the Blackberry, her phone lit up nearly everything the light from the entrance didn’t reach. She caught the look on Regina’s face as her lips drew tight in a scowl and Emma resisted the urge to sigh.

A few long minutes later, matches had been found and Regina had used them to light the candles scattered around the vault. When there was a steady enough glow for them to see by in the areas that had been too dark, Regina ruffled around through some books with her back turned towards Emma, and the Sheriff decided to bite the bullet.

“Look, I screwed up and you’re mad at me, but can we move past it so that this day doesn’t turn super painful?” Emma asked. “I’ll forget what I saw and we can work on mastering the other’s magic until we can switch back. If we get good enough maybe we can even do it by tonight?”

Regina flinched just a little bit when Emma started speaking but by the end of her question, she was at least looking at the other woman.

“I think that sounds reasonable,” Regina said, and Emma recognized the voice as Regina’s ultra-professional, ultra-distant Mayoral voice. “Let’s see what you can do with mine then. See if you can conjure more light.”

Emma raised a brow, but she nodded. She focused on her hand, wanting a simple glow around her fingers. She stared hard, watching the digits so intensely that her brow began to furrow and she felt a headache coming on.

“You don’t have to glare at something to cast magic on it,” Regina said dryly and Emma snapped out of her attempt.

“I’m not just glaring at your hand,” she shot back. “I’m concentrating.”

“You look like you’re constipated.”

“You mean _you_ look like you’re constipated.”

Regina balked at that for half a second before rushing on.

“Regardless, it’s the same as when you’re in your own body,” she said. “You can just concentrate, not cause yourself to burst a blood vessel. Don’t let your body be so tense when you’re working with magic.”

“As if you’ve ever relaxed a day in your life,” Emma mumbled.

“What was that?” Regina asked.

“Nothing.”

Emma turned her attention back to her hand and took a deep breath, thinking hard on the spell she wanted to cast. She just needed light. That was it. No words, no fancy hand gestures, just a glow in her fingers to prove she had some kind of control here.

She wanted to stay focused—she really did—but feeling Regina’s gaze on her didn’t help much, and she found that the more Regina stared at her, the more frustrated she got. She knew what the Mayor was probably thinking. She was probably thinking that Emma was stupid or that she had no talent or that she was… what had she said in Neverland?

 _A pathetic waste of ability_.

A slight tremor started in Emma’s hand and she frowned at the sight of the shaking. That was back again?

“Well?” Regina asked.

“Well, what?” Emma demanded, clenching the hand into a fist and turning to look at the woman in her body.

“Do you feel anything?” Regina asked. “Anything at all?”

“Other than you trying to bore a hole in my head with your eyes?” Emma asked. “Not a thing.”

“You’ve already used my magic plenty of times,” Regina pointed out. “Why can’t you do it now? It seems as though you have access to my magic. All I managed was a flash of white light in the bathroom the first morning we were switched and I’ve had nothing real since then, but you’ve been able to use it plenty.”

“It’s not like I was in control of it at those times,” Emma said. “I mean, come on, I nearly blasted you through a wall. And burned the hell out of your hand. _And_ the other time I almost set a bed on fire.”

“But you still managed something.”

“Well if I managed something then maybe we shouldn’t be focusing on _me_ , should we?” Emma snapped. Her hands were trembling harder and she crossed her arms to hide it—and it occurred to her very briefly that it was possible that was why the Mayor crossed her arms so often. It didn’t help much as she was sure she could feel various muscles all over her body twitching and it was wildly uncomfortable, but she tried to put it aside.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That I can actually use your magic and _you’re_ the weak link here.”

Saying that felt beyond the pale, and Emma knew she was just angry but it slipped out too quickly. Regina was acting like an asshole again for something incredibly minor. If she’d just told Emma off and went back to normal Emma wouldn’t have been so annoyed with her now—or at least, that was what Emma tried to tell herself. The fact that Regina didn’t trust her with the truth was needling her in a way she didn’t quite like.

Regina scowled and Emma was certain she’d never imagined such a foul look could exist on her own face before. The look was tempered with the fact that Emma couldn’t see the same darkness as she usually did in Regina’s gaze considering she was looking out of Emma’s eyes, but it was still alarmingly unpleasant an expression.

“If you’re such a master of magic,” Regina bit out, “maybe _you’d_ like to instruct me then.”

Her words were a challenge that Emma knew she didn’t dare take. There was no way she’d be able to coach Regina through something magical—Regina was the one with the knowledge, even if she didn’t currently have the ability.

“We both know that I can’t,” Emma said honestly. “All I’m saying is you’re harping on me for something you can’t even do right now. You need practice as much as I do but you’re too mad at me for something I’ve already apologized for to admit that.”

It was obvious as it had been a few times in the past that Regina was _very_ unused to being talked to the way Emma talked to her at times. Regina had spent years living as the Evil Queen, and in that time she’d clearly grown used to having those around her simply nod in agreement before doing what they were told. Sure she’d dealt with Snow, Charming, and a rebellion, but she’d set that aside and ruled Storybrooke as its Mayor with the same kind of iron fist. Emma was the outlier when it came to the way she spoke to Regina, and she knew how much that bothered the other woman when it came to situations like this.

Of course, it wasn’t her intention to bother Regina. She didn’t ever want to bother her. She wanted to be close to her, wanted to be friends the way they’d been building. She knew one fight wasn’t going to erase months of steady growth, but it might set it back a little, and she didn’t like that thought.

She had to tread carefully.

“Look, Regina,” Emma said. “I didn’t mean to insult you or anything. I just can’t focus with you breathing down my neck because you’re furious with me over an accident. It’s not like I went out of my way to find what you’re sensitive about. I noticed it in the mirror—and honestly, without the pound of make up you smear on your face it’s hard not to notice those marks. In any case, I won’t say anything to anyone or show anyone anything about it. I promise.”

“Oh great, I feel better now,” Regina said bitterly.

“You know I can keep a promise, Regina,” Emma said.

“I’m just amazed at how quickly and easily you stumble on to the worst parts of me,” Regina snapped. “And how you manage to ruin practically any time I start to relax and think things might be okay for a second.”

“I didn’t ruin anything!” Emma said. “It’s not like we couldn’t have moved on from it! But no, you decided to get angry and stay angry.”

“Ex _cuse_ me for being annoyed that you keep sticking your nose into places where your nose doesn’t belong!”

“Like what?” Emma demanded.

“Like my spell books?” Regina snapped. “We’re in this mess because _you_ were into something you weren’t supposed to be in!”

“You say it like I’m some kind of dog getting into the trash or something,” Emma said. “And honestly, I made a mistake then. It’s not like I make a habit of ‘sticking my nose in places’.” She put air quotes around the phrase and scoffed at it a little.

“You’re possibly the nosiest, most intrusive person I know,” Regina spat.

“What are you talking about? One spell book and one little peek in the mirror and suddenly I’m barging into your life?”

“You certainly didn’t hesitate to transplant yourself into my town or my life.”

“You were holding these people hostage, Regina,” Emma reminded her.

“And they were perfectly content leading the lives I created for them,” Regina said. “I think everyone forgets that portion of the whole debacle. It’s not as if I set everyone up as my slaves. They all had lives and jobs, and they were content.”

“Okay, putting aside how absolutely insane you sound trying to justify all that shit,” Emma said, sounding exasperated. “That’s not what this argument is about.”

“Now you’re dictating what we can fight over?”

“You’re dictating what I can and can’t do for the foreseeable future.”

“Because you’re in _my body_!”

“And you’re in mine, but I’m not giving you rules that change every second because of that fact!”

Emma could tell that Regina’s anger flared, partially from the look of fury in her eyes, partially from the bolt of white light that exploded from the other woman’s hands.

Emma had never seen her own magic from the outside, but it was alarmingly impressive. The magic burst from Regina, the light racing across the room in seconds and blasting past Emma. She felt her body seize up for a moment as an almost intolerable heat passed through her before dissipating the next moment.

As the light faded and the vault returned back to the dimly lit state it had been in before, Emma was gasping for breath, reaching for whatever was closest to hold herself up, and Regina was staring at her hands.

“Looks like you can finally use my magic,” Emma said dryly, trying to hide the panting breaths.

Regina looked up at Emma and for a moment, Emma couldn’t quite read her face. It was twisted in six different directions, as if Regina couldn’t tell what she was feeling, and then suddenly all of those emotions were gone and Regina was glaring at her again.

“I guess all we have to do is get into a fight and scream at each other a little bit to break this particular curse,” Regina shot back.

“Seems to be easy enough,” Emma said, “considering you can’t stop acting like an asshole for more than twelve hours at a time.”

“Oh, _I’m_ the one causing all of this?” Regina asked.

“Can we stop going in circles in this?” Emma’s patience was finally wearing thin, and she was sick of the bickering. The headache she'd felt coming on was in full swing now and she wasn't entirely sure she wanted to try to master this magic if it meant being around Regina at the moment. “If you can use some of my magic then let’s find that freaking book and switch back.”

“I can’t _use_ it,” Regina snapped. “It just _happened_. Your magic is uncontrollable.”

“Maybe to _you_ ,” Emma said. “I can control it just fine.”

“I’m sure you like to pretend as much.” Regina actually had the audacity to laugh, an indulgent smile flickering across her lips, and if Regina hadn’t been occupying Emma’s own body, Emma would have been much more tempted to punch her in the mouth.

“Well it’s not like yours is much better,” Emma shot back. “You’ve got control yeah, but how much of it is just battling back the darkness. I know exactly what happened when I got mad in your bedroom and when we were trying to use the magic the first time. I’m not stupid. I could feel the darkness inside of your body and how it took over.”

“As if you know what darkness feels like,” Regina scoffed, her smile fading to a scowl once more. “I had magic long before I had darkness though, and I have plenty of control over both.”

“I know enough about _you_ to know that it wasn’t just magic that I was struggling with,” the Sheriff said pointedly. “I can put two and two together.”

“There’s less darkness in me than there’s ever been since you showed up,” Regina said, and Emma realized suddenly that Regina was on the defensive—not the half-offense, half-defense she usually was on when she was accused of something.

“Maybe so but there’s enough that it’s still there, still waiting for you to use it,” Emma said. “And you do, don’t you? Otherwise it wouldn’t be as quick to snap up.”

“You don’t know _anything_ about it,” Regina snapped. “You barely know anything about your own magic.”

“Like I said, I know enough,” Emma said.

“Well if you know enough, let’s see it,” Regina said, crossing her arms.

“I’m still waiting for _you_ to show _me_ that you have the slightest bit of control over my magic. Or can you not use magic that isn’t dark? Is that what the problem is here? We could have been back in our own bodies ages ago with how I managed to hold on to your magic when I accidentally burned your hand, but _you_ can’t use light magic, can you?”

Regina looked flat out murderous now, and Emma forced herself not to back down.

Regina opened her mouth to respond, but their argument was interrupted by the sound of a ringtone blaring from Emma’s pocket. She glanced down, recognizing it as a call, not a text. She pulled her phone out and looked at the screen.

“My mom,” Emma said. “Can you answer it and pretend not to be angry for like, four seconds?”

Regina rolled her eyes more dramatically than Emma had ever seen anyone roll their eyes before but she took the phone and swiped the screen to take the call.

“What is it?” Regina asked, and Emma was about to glare at her for the way she’d answered the phone with much more attitude than Emma had wanted, but the other woman’s expression turned to one of surprise as Snow’s voice seemed to explode from the iPhone.

“Snow—Mom—Mom—Mom!” Regina said, realizing her mistake after a second and quickly attempting to correct herself as she tried to cover up calling the blonde’s mother by the wrong name. At first Emma thought she was overcompensating with repeating the word ‘mom’, but then she heard the terrified shrieking from the other end of the line. “Mom, what’s happening?!”

Emma couldn’t make out what was being said but the way Regina’s eyes widened, all fury leaving her expression, the Sheriff could tell that whatever was going on, it wasn’t going to be fun.

“Are you sure?” Regina asked. “What did it look like? No—not you _think_ , tell me _exactly_ what it looked like. Yes, I’ll know—yes, I know I didn’t grow up in the Enchanted Forest—I’m with Regina right now, we can figure it out! Now tell me what it looked like!”

Emma again couldn’t hear what her mother was saying, but the dread that filled Regina’s gaze was downright terrifying.

“Let me get Regina,” the Mayor said, her gaze finding Emma’s again. “We’ll meet you at the town hall as soon as we can.”

Emma heard her mother shriek, “Just _hurry_!” before Regina hit the button to end the call.

“What the hell is going on?” Emma demanded.

“The newest bit of insanity to hit this town,” Regina said, the look on her face making Emma’s stomach flip. “Your mother said that there’s a huge snake downtown.”

“Okay?”

“Not huge as in big, I mean _huge_ ,” Regina clarified. “She said it was close to forty feet long.”

“What the hell kind of snake is that big?” Emma asked.

“Not a non-magical one,” Regina said grimly. “We’ve got to go check it out. The way she talked about it… I’m worried. She said it was bigger around than a tree trunk and dark green. She said she didn’t get a chance to see its face but I think that might be a good thing.”

“What’s wrong with looking something like that in the face?”

“A snake that size appearing overnight in Storybrooke?” Regina asked. “I’d bet my life that it’s a basilisk. If she’d seen its face she wouldn’t have been able to make that call.”

“Wait, a basilisk? Like in Harry Potter?”

Regina rolled her eyes.

“Essentially. Except instead of being in the pages of a book, it’s alive in our town, which means we have to go.”

She was already moving towards the door to the vault when Emma grabbed her arm. She could feel the other woman’s hand trembling slightly and it pulled her out of her sudden determination to rush out and deal with this new threat. She knew she trembled when she was stressed in any way so it was easy to figure out what Emma was feeling but she was praying Emma hadn’t noticed—although the odds of that were slim to none.

“What are we going to do though?” Emma asked pointedly. “Neither of us has magic. If this thing is some magical snake, what are we going to do about it?”

“We’re going to kill it,” Regina said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You’re saying you have all this control over your magic and mine—now you’re going to go use it while I get Henry the _hell_ out of harm’s way.”

“Regina, you aren’t listening!” Emma said. “I don’t know anything about this thing and we’re essentially powerless. If we’re going to go try to kill this thing, we need to have something in our arsenal. We’re stopping at the station first.”

“I won’t waste time when Henry’s out there with something that dangerous on the loose!” Regina snapped.

“And I’m not going after this thing without some kind of weapon!” Emma replied. She was amazed she was the more sensible of the two of them now, but seeing how Regina’s immediate thought was of Henry’s safety reminded Emma again why she liked the Mayor—even if she was a raging bitch sometimes. “We’ll arm ourselves, go get him, then you’ll bring him back here and hide him down here. In the meantime I’ll go meet up with my mom and try to figure this thing out. When Henry’s safe you can join us.”

Regina hesitated for a long moment, wanting to be stubborn just for the sake of pissing Emma off after their fight, but she knew that she couldn’t do that right now. Instead she just nodded.

“I’ll call him and tell him we’re picking him up from school,” she said. “And I’ll put out an emergency alert to the town while you drive.”

Emma didn’t think twice about the fact that Regina was going to let her drive this time and instead just bolted out of the vault with Regina close behind. They were in the car in less than a minute, Regina with her phone to her ear as Emma started the engine.

Emma could only think of two things with this news—Henry’s safety and how she should have seen this coming. It was bad enough that she and Regina were in the wrong bodies, but now they had limited to no control over the magic the bodies possessed and there was a new magical threat to the town. Emma knew she had barely had a moment’s peace since Henry knocked on her door in Boston, but this was a little much.

“Will you hurry up?” Regina spat. “He’s not answering!”

Emma flattened the pedal and the Mercedes peeled out down the street.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you guys think this was going to ONLY be about a body swap? NAH. If the show is allowed to get insane and ridiculous then so am I.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Snake-hunting time and emotions are running high! 
> 
> Got into some emotional stuff here and there because I like dumping in that kind of crap. 
> 
> I won't lie, I wrote most of this while I was very tired and I'm very tired now so in my mind it makes sense but I hope it makes sense in your minds as well. I also hope you like it!

Regina was utterly silent as they walked into the station. Her steps were quick and she was clearly agitated. Emma didn’t blame her—they hadn’t gotten a hold of Henry on his cell, and the minutes that ticked by without knowing for sure if he was okay had been agonizing. Regina had called the school directly and managed to speak to the principal, letting her know what was happening before the principal had called Henry into the office. Once Regina had spoken to him they at least weren’t panicking that they were already too late, but the mood—already soured by their arguing—hadn’t lightened.

Regina also hated the idea that they were stopping for anything. Sure having some kind of protection while they were powerless was a good idea, but she hated knowing her son was out there without her while something insane was going on.

The station was wide open but abandoned, which both women had expected. With a police force of two people, one of whom was out with his wife while the other was dealing with a literal out-of-body experience, it wasn’t as if the station would be a whirlwind of activity.

“Through here,” Emma said, leading the way towards the armory. “I’m going to set you up with a simple hand gun. Nothing too fancy, just undo the safety, point, and shoot. If something’s going wrong at least.”

“I’m not about to start firing a gun for the sake of firing a gun,” Regina said, her voice clipped and hard. “Just give me whatever you think I need and I’ll take if from there.”

“I want you to be safe with it, Regina,” Emma said. “It’s not a joke and that’s not a toy. I need you to actually listen carefully, okay? It’s not me being condescending, it’s me wanting you to be safe.”

The authority in Emma’s voice at that moment drew Regina up. She was surprised by it though she knew she really shouldn’t be. Emma was a born leader and had proved it a number of times, but it always caught Regina off guard to be reminded of it.

It was also a little bit of a turn on, and Regina hated it. She tempered that thought with the usual facts that kept her from thinking too hard on it and reminded herself of the predicament they were in.

“Go ahead then,” Regina said.

Emma seemed surprised by this but she led them into the armory and started going through the available weaponry. She retrieved a small handgun and checked it over before turning to the Mayor.

“Okay, can I give you the run down on this?”

Regina nodded, allowing Emma to explain the weapon as quickly and simply as she could. A lot of the words Emma used didn’t _quite_ make sense, but the basics of it did, and Regina felt confident taking the gun. Emma got her a holster and showed her how to clip it on and the gun in, then emphasized that the only time Regina should fire was if no one but the monster was directly in front of the barrel.

As Regina settled the gun into the holster her phone beeped. The Mayor checked it, opened the text from the principal of Henry’s school, and swore softly.

“There’s tons of traffic headed towards the school,” she said. “Principal Holland got in contact with the parents and let them know safety measures are being taken but people are panicking and rushing to get their kids.”

“So what do we do now?” Emma asked a bit nervously. “I don’t want to put off getting Henry.”

“I’ll run to the school to get Henry,” Regina said. “I’ll come back to the car, drive him to the vault, seal him in, and be back. You go and meet up with your parents. Get all the information you can and start figuring out what we can do here.”

It sounded ridiculous that Regina would want to literally run anywhere, especially with a monster on the loose, but Emma knew that there was no way she would do anything too risky when Henry was on the line.

“On it,” Emma said, nodding once. The two women were about to rush off when Emma said, “Regina? Be careful. Not just with Henry, but… you be careful, too.”

Regina looked confused for a moment before she said, “Of course,” and headed out, running out of the station towards the school. When Emma left the station she turned in the opposite direction and ran towards the town hall where her parents had called from.

It was hard to run in the heels she’d been given to wear as the Mayor, so it took Emma all of ten seconds to kick them off and carry them the rest of the way to the town hall. She figured Regina wouldn’t care about or notice some ripped pantyhose in a situation like this.

As she ran into the town hall she nearly crashed into her parents. They were standing at the door and both of them looked endlessly anxious.

“Regina!” Snow said in surprise. “What are you doing here?” Her gaze flicked to the heels in hand and the stockinged feet.

“Emma’s getting Henry from the school and asked that I come here to help,” Emma said, trying to sound brisk in order to shut down any questions. “What are you doing at the door? This thing will take no time at all to turn you into its lunch if you’re just gawking at the street.”

“We were waiting for Emma to get here,” Snow said. “How far away is she? How long will she be?”

“She’s at the school,” Emma said slowly, trying to sound as if she were spelling something out for an idiot to try to mimic Regina as best as possible. “She won’t be more than a few minutes. She’s fast. Now tell me what you know already.”

“We don’t know anything,” David said. “We heard a scream and looked just in time to see a snake the size of a house slither past the door. We stayed put until it was gone and then went out to see who had screamed and…”

Emma waited for him to continue but as her father trailed off he turned to gesture to the secretary’s desk. Her gaze followed the motion and she gasped as she saw a human figure slumped against the desk.

“Who is that?” she asked. “Why didn’t you bring them to the hospital?”

“It’s Marty,” Snow said, her eyes filling with tears. He wasn’t particularly close with Snow or anyone Emma really knew, but she knew how much her mother cared about the people who lived in the town—who made up the residents of her kingdom. “He’s who we heard. He… He’s…”

“He’s dead,” David finished for his wife when she broke off.

Emma’s eyes went wide.

“What happened to him?” she demanded, approaching the body and checking him over as if she’d find her parents were mistaken. “What did that thing do?”

“We have no idea,” Snow said. “There isn’t a mark on him. We heard him scream and then… he was dead. We brought him in here to deal with him in less public a place.”

Emma remembered what Regina had said about it being a good thing that Snow hadn’t gotten a good look at the snake’s face.

“I think it’s a basilisk,” she said, wanting to sound somewhat in control here. Regina would sound in control. Regina would know what to do. And besides, Emma _had_ seen Harry Potter. She knew the basics. She hoped. “If you look it in the eye it… it kills you.”

“ _What_?” David asked incredulously. “Just like that?” He snapped to illustrate his point.

“Exactly like that,” Emma said. “He must have caught its gaze directly.”

“And Emma’s out there with Henry?” Snow asked, her voice rising in pitch and volume.

“She is,” Emma replied. “But she’ll be here soon. Until then, we’ve got to call around and see what people know.”

 

* * *

 

When Regina burst in through the front doors of the school, wild eyed and slightly winded, she forced her way through the sea of parents and students. She didn’t care that they were all there for the same reason as her and that they had family they were searching for as well. All she cared about was getting to Henry.

She’d told him to forget about trying to find her first or trying to wait in the office, instead directing him to wait by the janitor’s closet on the first floor closest to the lunchroom. At the first sign of trouble he was to lock himself inside. It was far from any window, which meant that Henry would almost certainly not have the opportunity to look at the monster if it happened to show its face near the school.

She battled her way through the crowd to the spot she’d told her son to wait for her and was relieved to see him waiting with his hand on the door handle. The white-knuckle grip relaxed the moment they made eye contact and he bolted for her.

“Mom!” he said as he barreled into her, wrapping his arms around her waist tightly. She didn’t hesitate to return the hug, clinging to him the way he clung to her.

“You’re okay, right?” she asked him, worry in her voice as she pushed him back from their hug gently to examine him carefully.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, though it was clear he was shaken up. “I’m just glad you’re here.”

Regina’s hands rested on his cheeks and she tried on a smile, feeling as though her heart might burst from the relief of knowing her son was safe.

“We’ve got to go,” she said. “Your mother and I agreed the safest place for you is in my vault. It can’t be accessed except through the mausoleum door and it’s isolated. It’ll be safe until we can defeat this thing.”

She took his hand to start to lead him out but Henry’s grip tightened around her fingers and he stayed where he was.

“No,” he said, shaking his head wildly. “I’m not going to the vault.”

“There’s a _basilisk_ loose in town,” she said. “I’m not going to let you run free while this is happening.”

“I’m not going to run free!” he said hotly.

“What else do you propose you do then?” Regina demanded.

“I’m staying with you!” he said. “I’m not leaving you!”

“You have to, Henry,” Regina said, trying to sound authoritative and calm despite her panic over the situation. “You’ll be safe there.”

“I’ll be safe with you,” he insisted. “Please, Mom, don’t make me go there. Don’t make me leave you. I don’t want to leave you.”

“Henry, please listen to me here—“

“No!” he said, his grip on her tightening to the point of pain as he seemed to plant himself as firmly as he could. He seemed so fierce at that moment that she could almost have laughed—he reminded her quite a bit of herself.

“I’m not leaving you,” he insisted. “What if something happens? What if you get hurt? What if you lock me in there and something happens to you? What if I can’t find you after?”

Regina stared at him, wanting him to understand that she was trying to protect him, but as she stared she noticed that there were tears in her son’s eyes and there wasn’t just anger in them—there was fear.

“I’m staying with you,” he declared, his grip crushing now, and Regina finally got it.

Since they’d gotten home safely from Neverland, Henry went between his mothers and school. He occasionally spent time with his grandparents, with Neal, or with Hook—hell, sometimes he even went out with friends or to Archie’s office on his own—but for the most part he was with his mothers. Of course it was reasonable for a child to be attached to his parents, but it was more than that with Henry. He sought out his mothers and clung to them in ways other children his age didn’t, and it hit Regina that his refusal to be hidden away in the vault wasn’t just not wanting to miss any of the action.

“Henry,” she said softly, and she pulled him close again for another hug. “Nothing is going to happen to you again.”

“You don’t know that,” he said. “You don’t know that it’s not going to go wrong again. Something could happen to you or to me or to Mom or Grandma or Grandpa or—or—“

“I know,” Regina said, cutting him off before he got more worked up. “I know that nothing is going to happen because I’m not going to let it. We got separated before, but I’ll burn this world to the ground before I let anything tear you away from me again.”

“You don’t _know_ ,” he said, burying his face in her shirt. “I don’t want to go to the vault. Please don’t make me go.”

With her arms wrapped tight around her son as he cried, she took a moment to let her heart break for him. She knew he’d been traumatized by what had happened in Neverland, knew he’d had trouble with the fact that he’d been taken and manipulated into almost letting himself be killed so easily, but the fact that he was so terrified to be alone at this moment was set to destroy her. She wished she could go back in time simply to find a way to see to Greg, Tamara, and Pan’s deaths herself. She couldn’t deny she’d always felt a little cheated of the opportunity to take them out, but now more than ever she wished she’d gotten to be the one to pull the metaphorical trigger on those three.

“You’re to listen to everything your mother or I tell you to do,” she said sternly, still holding the boy to her. “Not one toe out of line. I don’t care what Snow or David say, you listen to Emma and I, and Emma and I _alone_. Do you understand?”

He looked up at her in surprise at that, his watery eyes blinking as he tried to figure out if he was actually hearing her correctly.

“If you really don’t want to go, then you won’t go,” she said simply in response to his silent question. “I’d rather you feel safe as well as be safe. Besides, your mother has made sure we’re both sufficiently armed.” She gestured to the gun at her hip and he stared at it in confusion for a moment before nodding.

“I promise I’ll do whatever you want me to,” he vowed, his grip on his mother still uncomfortable, but Regina noticed he was loosening up just a little bit.

“Okay, good,” she said. “Now come on. I told Emma that I would be fast. We’ve got to get back to her in any case—I sent her ahead to meet up with your grandparents and lord only knows what she’s saying as me.”

 

* * *

 

“In the movie he used a sword,” Emma said. “We can probably do the same for this one.”

“Regina…” Snow said slowly. “I don’t think that Harry Potter is really a how-to on killing magical creatures.”

“Besides, didn’t the basilisk in that have its eyes gouged out by a bird to keep it from killing?” David added. “We don’t have that.”

“Well what else do you suggest we do?” Emma demanded, exasperated by the holes Snow was poking in her logic. “I’d be happy to entertain any ideas that you two may have.”

Snow and David traded a look and Emma wanted to scream. She was just trying to keep up the ruse that she was Regina and they would _not_ stop asking questions—questions she was sure that the real Regina would know.

The headache that had started earlier that day was growing as she scrambled to think of responses to everything her parents said, but she was saved from another barrage by the door crashing open with a bang. She turned to look and saw Regina and Henry come running inside. Regina turned and hurriedly closed the door behind them, ushering their son further into the room.

“What the hell is he doing here?” Emma asked, even as Henry broke away from Regina to run to his other mother and hug her. “It’s not safe.”

“I know it’s not,” Regina said.

“Mom said I could stay as long as I listened,” Henry said. “I didn’t want to be in the vault. What if something happened? I want to be with you guys. And I won’t do anything stupid, I promise.”

“You could have at least called me and warned me he was coming,” Emma said, looking over their son’s head to the other woman. She turned Henry back towards Regina, and when the other woman shot a questioning look at her, Emma subtly nodded towards the slumped figure of Marty.

Regina’s surprise at seeing a dead body was markedly less than Emma’s surprise had been. Her gaze slid to Henry and she seemed to at least be upset that her son would be exposed to death, even if the death itself wasn’t all that alarming to her.

“Henry, close your eyes,” Regina ordered, and Henry did it without hesitating. “Regina, Mom, Dad… can you deal with that while I’m bringing Henry to Regina’s office? And then meet us there afterward.”

She took Henry by the hand and led him down the hallway towards her office. He kept his eyes shut dutifully, and luckily missed any sight of the body. Emma and her parents hurried to move the man’s body to another office and shut the door behind them. They’d have to deal with it later. Now they had to make sure the body count didn’t go up.

When everyone was assembled in Regina’s office, Regina didn’t hesitate to start.

“So what did you find out?” she asked. “What’s been going on?”

“We called around and found out that the basilisk isn’t staying close to here,” Emma said. “Snow called Ruby and Ruby said that it was most recently seen heading underground—Happy caught sight of its tail disappearing into a sewer grate it had utterly destroyed.”

“So you mean that it could be close by but it can’t be seen because it’s lurking in the pipes,” Regina said.

“Like in Harry Potter?” Henry asked.

“Exactly what I said, kid,” Emma said, smiling a little tightly.

“Gods help us,” Regina said softly. She raised her voice again. “Okay. Well now we need a game plan. If this thing can pop up anywhere at any time, we need to kill it quickly.”

“Aren’t basilisks killed by roosters?” Henry asked.

“What?” Regina asked, unable to help the surprise in her voice.

“I read it,” he said. “When I realized everyone was from a storybook I started reading about this kind of thing—fairy tales and myths and stuff. A basilisk is the king of snakes, born from a snake egg hatched by a chicken. They can only be killed by a rooster or a mirror.”

“What do you mean a mirror can kill it?” Emma asked. “And what will a rooster do? This thing is a few hundred times bigger than a rooster according to what people are saying.”

“It’s a _lot_ bigger than a rooster, Henry,” Snow said, sounding almost apologetic for shooting down his idea.

“I _know_ ,” he said. “But it’s what the stories say. They can be killed by hearing a rooster’s crow or seeing itself in a mirror. Everything else is pretty much going to bounce right off of them.”

“So the guns were for nothing then,” Regina said dryly, shooting Emma a look. “Just a waste of time when we could have been fetching our son.”

“We don’t know they’re not going to be effective,” Emma pointed out.

“Can we focus?” David demanded. “You two need to stop bickering long enough for us to actually get a plan down. You can fight later.”

Regina rounded on him, looking ready to argue with him now as well, but Henry interrupted.

“There’s a farm that Mom used to take me to when I was a kid,” he said. “The one near the town line that we’d go to in the fall to pick apples and pumpkins. They always had animals and I think they had chickens. If we go we can probably find a rooster.”

The four adults looked between one another as if searching for someone who had a different idea—a better idea that didn’t involve bringing Henry in the open—but it seemed like the most sound one so far. Besides that, if this thing was underground they’d hopefully have a straight shot to get the best weapon against it.

“Let’s not waste time,” Emma said decisively. “If we’re doing this we’ve got to get going. Emma and I will bring Henry to the Mercedes, Snow, David, you can take your truck if you have it.”

The Charmings nodded and hurried out for their truck while Emma, Regina, and Henry hurried to leave town hall. Emma drew her own weapon, even knowing it was uneffective—it made her feel less vulnerable in a way. She led the way down the street to where she and Regina had abandoned the Mercedes and piled in.

Winding through the streets of downtown Storybrooke was like something out of the Twilight Zone and Emma felt sick to her stomach. It was either totally abandoned or there were people running between hiding spots. Word had clearly traveled quickly which was a good thing, but now Emma couldn’t help imagining the worst around every corner. She had hopped in the driver’s seat while Regina had gone for the passenger seat, not caring about Emma’s driving record at the moment. All Regina could think of was finding a way to kill this monster.

David’s truck was loud, rattling along behind them in a way that made both women cringe. There was no subtlety with it around, and every single person they passed glared at the car for the attention it drew.

As they got closer to where the commercial streets of the town turned into residential streets, they saw people were more panicked and running faster, all headed back in the direction of the downtown area. Emma pulled over and rolled the window down as quickly as she could.

“Where’s everyone running?” she demanded of one of the women scurrying past.

“I heard it’s back there,” the woman said, panting for breath. “It’s—It’s using the sewers. Someone saw it spring up on Lee Street. Someone else looked it in the eye.”

Emma’s stomach dropped and she nodded grimly.

“Get somewhere isolated,” she told the woman. “Somewhere without windows. Don’t move unless its absolutely necessary.”

As the woman ran off to follow the orders that the “Mayor” had given her, Emma stepped on the gas again, hating the sound of the rattling truck behind them. If the basilisk was lurking somewhere up ahead, David’s truck was going to get them all killed.

Regina seemed to be of the same mind because Emma heard her mutter, “Good to know we’re going to be able to slip past unnoticed,” and glanced over in time to see her glare in the rear view mirror. Henry sat half on Regina’s lap considering there was no other space in the cramped car, but he wasn’t complaining about it this time and Regina seemed happy with the fact that it allowed her to wrap her arms around him tightly

“We’ll be fine,” Emma said.

“We’re heading straight for where people said they saw it,” Regina pointed out. “And your father seems to have avoided caring for his truck at all in recent years.”

“I doubt he thought that he’d have to drive silently to avoid attracting the attention of a massive fucking snake,” Emma shot back.

“Moms!” Henry snapped, cutting off Regina’s angry tirade about swearing in front of their son before she even got started. “This isn’t the time! Like Grampa said, you can fight later.”

Emma rolled her eyes and turned her attention fully back to the road. She saw people were still running, but when she saw yet another sewer cover overturned she slowed down just a little. There were two bodies slumped over on the road and she saw Regina cover Henry’s eyes out of the corner of her own.

Beyond that a little bit was the figure of a man facing away from the bodies and the sewer cover, and Emma squinted a little to try to see him better. From behind, she had a feeling she recognized him but was praying she didn’t.

As they got closer, the sense of dread that had been growing was slowly taking over Emma’s entire being. The dark hair swept back, the height, the black leather coat that was flapping just slightly in the wind as the frozen figure balanced mid-stride, all of it told her exactly who it was no matter how much she tried to mentally deny it.

One arm was raised as if to hide his face but his hand—no, not his hand—hovered directly in front of his eyes. He’d managed to avoid looking directly at it by seeing it in the reflection of his hook.

“ _Killian_ ,” Emma breathed, her voice tight.

Tires shrieked to a halt as Emma threw the Mercedes into park and threw open the door. She heard David’s car stop but she didn’t even look over as she ran to her boyfriend’s still form, panic rising in her. She was trembling when she arrived directly in front of him, unable to stop her body from shaking so wildly she could barely stand straight.

She grabbed his coat by the lapels and shook hard, but rather than rouse the pirate it just caused his frozen body to rock and then start to fall. She was surprised when her father and mother appeared next to her, managing to catch Killian’s body before he fell over. They’d run after Emma along with Regina and Henry.

“What happened to him?” Emma nearly shrieked.

Regina winced. With Snow and David around while Emma acted like this, there was no way they could continue to pretend they hadn’t switched places.

“He must have seen the basilisk,” Regina said.

“Is he—?”

“No, he’s just frozen in place,” Regina said quickly.

“He’ll be okay, right?” Emma asked. “He’ll—we can unfreeze him, right?”

Silence greeted that. No one knew whether they could or not, and no one wanted to promise that it would happen.

“There’s got to be a way!” Emma insisted.

“Emma, it’s okay,” Snow said softly, reaching out for her daughter in the Mayor’s body. “We’ll figure something out. There’s going to be something. But right now we have to move.”

“I—I can’t leave him!” Emma said, her eyes filled with tears. “We can’t do that to him!”

“We won’t,” David said. “We’ll load him into the bed of my truck and get him somewhere safe. You and Regina head on to the farm and we’ll catch up later once we’ve brought Hook—Killian somewhere safe.”

“Wait—“ Henry said suddenly. “Do you know?” He stared at his grandparents in shock.

“That your mothers have switched places somehow?” David asked. “Yeah.”

“’Emma’ was acting weird the other morning and ‘Regina’ was quoting Harry Potter as a way to solve this problem,” Snow added. “We knew something was up. ‘Regina’s’ reaction to seeing Killian confirmed our suspicions.”

“Is this really something we have to talk about now?” Regina interrupted harshly. She looked furious, so fierce her gaze seemed ready to set someone on fire.

Emma knew that Regina was going to be mad at her about this later but at the moment she just didn’t care.

“Please, we have to get him somewhere safe,” she said. “ _Now_.”

David nodded and gestured at Hook’s petrified body. Without a word, Snow and Emma helped David to lift and carry the man towards the truck and load him into the bed of it.

Emma stared at her boyfriend as if staring would cause him to move again, but nothing happened.

“Emma, you’ve got to go,” Snow said gently, putting her hand on the woman’s shoulder. “We’ll take care of him, we promise.”

Emma could barely tear her eyes away, but eventually she knew she had to. Her mouth set in a grim line and she nodded.

“Let’s go kill this thing,” she said. “Keep him somewhere safe. Regina, Henry, and I will meet up with you in a little while.”

Snow and David each pulled their daughter into a hug, retreating quickly when they realized that the actual mayor bristled as they hugged her body. It was odd, and neither of the Charmings could really wrap their minds around the fact that they were hugging Regina’s body but Emma’s mind. They set it aside quickly, knowing full well there were bigger problems in the town at that moment.

A few moments later found Emma back in the driver’s seat, Regina and Henry back in the passenger seat together. The silence that stretched between the three of them was almost overwhelming. Regina was fuming about the Charmings knowing what she’d been trying so hard to hide, Emma was out for snake blood, and Henry simply didn’t know what to say.

Finally, the boy turned his head just slightly to look Regina in the eye. It was an odd angle considering he was sitting in her lap, but when his gaze met Regina’s he looked pointedly in Emma’s direction. Regina glared back at him, wanting to say out loud that she shouldn’t have to comfort Emma on the loss of the pirate, but Henry’s gaze was so insistent that she sighed.

“We’re going to fix it,” Regina said. “Petrification isn’t irreversible. I can find a potion or a spell to bring him back to his normal, intolerable self.”

“As if _you’re_ actually going to do that,” Emma said sourly.

“I am,” Regina said. “Whether I like him or not, I’m going to do it.”

“Oh and why’s that?” Emma demanded. “You hate him. Why would you help someone you hate?”

“Because I don’t hate _you_ ,” Regina said.

“You’ve been acting a whole lot like you do today.”

“Because you’ve been nosy, obnoxious, and clearly not careful enough to act like me when you’re around your parents—“

“Can you two stop it?!” Henry shouted. The two women went silent in surprise as Henry blew up at them. “Why can’t you get along like you’ve been getting along? What’s so hard about keeping all the fights down while we’re dealing with this? It’s going to drive you two apart and you _know_ that you’re stronger together!”

Neither of them really knew what to say and so they said nothing. They both at the very least looked slightly shamed by what their son had said, and Henry waited a long moment before he looked back out the front windshield. He knew it was out of line to talk to his parents in that way, but when there was so much on the line he couldn’t stand to hear them talk to each other like that.

Besides that, he’d made an excellent point—even if they fought, they were stronger together. In his mind, his moms had incredible powers that only ever amplified the other’s. They’d stopped the town from imploding and had moved the moon to save his life for crying out loud. He knew that the only way the town had any chance of being saved from this thing was if his mothers worked together.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for unnamed human death, animal death, gore, and some disgusting pining for Hook.
> 
> I struggled with this one but I'm actually relatively happy with how it came out.

The farm they pulled into was familiar to both Regina and Henry, and as they wound down the lane to get to the distant barn they could see from the road Regina muttered something about parking close to the farmhouse so they could explain themselves. 

Henry's outburst had silenced his mothers and made the remainder of the drive more than a little awkward, but they at least weren't fighting anymore. They seethed, silently coming up with comebacks and unbeatable points in imagined arguments, but they didn't fight out loud. 

By the time they approached the house, an uneasy feeling had added itself to all of that unpleasantness and the three of them stepped out of the car to an utterly silent farm. Where they expected the sounds of cowbells clanking, horses neighing, or even grain being noisily chomped on, they were met with nothing but the wind rustling through the grasses. 

They stood in the quiet for a long moment before Emma and Regina traded a look and Regina moved Henry behind her. 

"Put your hand on my shoulder and close your eyes," she ordered her son. "If I tell you to run or if I stop short without saying anything, keep your eyes closed until you've turned fully around and then get out of here as fast as you can."

Henry didn't hesitate a moment and did as he was asked, falling into step behind his mother. She narrated what she was doing to give her son a heads up about everything and the sound of her voice sliced through the silence like a knife.

The farmhouse door was wide open and Emma led the way up the steps, the gun she'd taken from the station drawn. She glanced back at Regina once to pointedly look at the gun on her hip and Regina drew it, mentally going over everything Emma had hurriedly taught her only a little while ago. Regina refused to admit even to herself that she was praying to not have to use it. 

The first creak of the floorboards cause all three of them to freeze in place. 

"Stay," Regina hissed to their son, not wanting him to get the wrong idea and follow her direction to run if she stopped short. 

Emma started to back up, but when she lifted her foot again she realized it was her own feet making the noise. She mentally cursed but stayed where she was for a long moment. 

The creak went unanswered, and after a while Emma nodded to Regina, gesturing that they could keep moving. She realized her hands were shaking and her head was pounding, and she hoped that if anything happened Regina would be able to step up. She wasn't entirely certain she would be all that useful with the issues Regina's body was presenting her with. 

Emma led the way through the house, moving carefully to avoid making too much noise in case there actually was someone home, but the more they walked around the less she worried. 

The house being only one floor, it didn't take them long to look through it. It looked as if someone had left in a hurry. In the kitchen there were dishes in the sink and on the counter, some clean, some dirty, and in the living room there were newspapers scattered by one of the chairs. 

"I don't think anyone is here," Emma said softly. 

Regina nodded.

"But why is this place abandoned?" Regina asked. 

"No idea," Emma said. "We've got to look around more though. We might find some answers."

"Henry, are you okay?" Regina asked. 

"I'm fine, Mom," he said. "Can I open my eyes again?"

"Not yet," she said. "Just a few more minutes."

They left the house and headed towards the barn, keeping as quiet as possible and alert. They reached the barn doors and found that they'd seemingly been thrown open, but Regina reminded herself that didn't necessarily mean anything. 

Emma paused at the door and held up a hand for them to stop once more. 

"Do you smell that?" she asked. 

Regina and Henry both nodded. 

"It smells familiar," Regina admitted as Henry said, "It's gross."

"But do you hear that?" Regina said pointedly. 

They gave it another moment of silence before Emma shook her head, looking at the other woman quizzically. 

"Exactly," Regina said. "It's a farm. Don't you think there would be some noise? When I bring Henry every year there's always something. Now? Nothing."

"Henry, stay right here," Emma said. "Keep your eyes shut and your ears open."

She gave Regina a look and Regina turned around, gently brushed her hand across her son's cheek with her free hand, then turned back to the barn and raised the gun. She nodded to Emma and they moved in through the door. 

The strange smell they'd caught from outside was at least a hundred times stronger inside the barn and Emma gagged. Regina made a face, but as they crossed the threshold she realized where she knew it from. 

She had been violent and cruel enough in her time as the Evil Queen to recognize the stink of death and blood. 

The sight that greeted them was just as gruesome as the smell. There were bits and pieces of animals scattered around the barn, and it was hard to walk in a clean spot. Emma and Regina hesitated a long moment before walking further into the barn, searching for some kind of answer to this. 

"It can't be the snake, can it?" Emma asked, her voice hushed in awe and horror this time. "It petrifies and kills with a look. It wouldn't need to do this."

"It still needs to eat," Regina replied. "We should be glad it did this here and not in town."

"Shit," Emma said. Regina looked at her and Emma gestured ahead. 

Up ahead we're the crumpled bodies of a man and woman. They weren't frozen like Hook had been. Instead they were still, and neither woman needed to wonder about the whereabouts of the house's occupants anymore. 

Emma gave a low whistle. 

"This thing is messed up," she said. "It slaughtered the entire farm."

"Which means we're screwed," Regina said. When Emma looked to her Regina said, "There's feathers everywhere. It has to have killed the chickens."

"Maybe we'll get lucky?"

"Because we've been so lucky lately."

"I have to look on the bright side or I'll lose it."

"Then you do that and I'll look on the realistic side."

Emma huffed and set about picking her way across the gore-filled barn while Regina investigated the side of the barn that had a chicken coop. She found her way to the opposite end of the building and saw a massive hole in the wall. 

"I think it busted out of here when it was done eating," she called over her shoulder to the other woman. 

"Well I think I found out where it came from," Regina called back. Emma glanced over and saw Regina holding up a sign that read, 'Storybrooke's Only Herptologicle Petting Zoo!' At Emma's look of confusion, Regina added, "Herpetological is spelled incorrectly, but it has to do with the study of reptiles--snakes included. I also found a number of rotten eggs that don't look like chicken eggs over here." She indicated a bench that had a big box filled with hay under what seemed to be a lamp--a low-tech version of an incubator. "It wouldn't take much more than an hour of nesting for a single snake egg to be transformed to a basilisk egg with the amount of magic in Storybrooke provided it had a hen sitting on it."

"So you're saying this guy wanted a new, exciting thing for the town and some stupid chicken happened to sit on the wrong egg and unleashed a giant fucking snake on us?" Emma asked, stunned by the idea. 

"We can't know for sure," Regina said, "but I think so. It's better than thinking this man did it intentionally at least."

"You know what?" Emma said. "Storybrooke sucks. You really fucked up making this place."

Regina glared across the barn at her. 

"Yes, well, putting that aside for now," she hissed, "we at least know two things. One, we have a vague idea of where this came from, and two, we know we've got to do this with mirrors."

"Are there seriously no other chickens in this town?" Emma asked. 

"Not that I'm aware of," she said. "I hate birds, so it's actually illegal to keep birds as a pet within five miles of the center of town."

"The town isn't even that wide across," Emma pointed out. 

"Except in this spot, which is 5.1 miles from the center of town," Regina said. "He can legally only keep chickens on certain parts of his property."

"All because you don't like birds?"

"Yes."

"You're fucking insane, Regina," Emma said, sounding endlessly done with the conversation. 

"I made this town exactly as I wanted it," she said stubbornly. 

"And now it's come back to bite us in the ass."

"We don't have time for this. Like Henry keeps saying, we can have this out later."

"You'd better believe we're going to have this out," Emma grumbled. 

Regina rolled her eyes and led the way back out of the barn.

“Moms?” Henry asked as they approached, obvious worry in his voice.

“It’s us, kid,” Emma replied, and she saw his posture relax.

“Is everything okay?”

“No,” Regina said honestly. “But we’re going to keep you safe, so don’t worry about it.”

It didn’t seem to assuage any fears the boy had but they couldn’t lie to him about the situation. It seemed as though things were about to get infinitely more complicated in the near future.

“Let’s get back to the car,” Emma suggested. “We need to get in touch with my parents and let them know what we found, then we need to regroup and figure out how we’re going to do this.”

“Just what I wanted to do, meet back up with your _parents_ ,” Regina muttered.

Emma ignored it for the moment and led the way back to the Mercedes. They piled in the way they had before and Emma called her parents to let them know the situation.

“Emma?” Snow asked.

“Yeah, it’s me,” she said.

“It’s going to be hard getting used to that—Regina’s voice.”

“Believe me, it’s harder for us. But it won’t be much longer. We’re working on it. Listen, we found what set this thing loose. You know the farm Regina mentioned? The farmer wanted to expand his menagerie and ended up getting himself, his wife, and a lot of his animals in a lot of trouble. We think the basilisk slaughtered all the chickens, which means no rooster crow to kill the thing.”

“What are we doing otherwise?” Snow asked. “Find a way to use a mirror?”

“I think that’s all we’ve got going for us,” Emma admitted. “Where are you?”

“The library,” Snow replied. “We brought Killian here to try to stow him far away from the street in case the snake comes back.”

“Stay there and we’ll meet you,” Emma ordered. “If anything goes wrong then make sure you stay hidden and keep your eyes closed.”

They said their goodbyes and Emma hung up.

“We’re headed for the library,” she told the others.

Regina didn’t answer but Henry nodded. Emma risked a quick glance over at Regina and saw she had her hand open, her palm facing upwards. Regina’s eyes were closed and Emma forced herself to look away.

“What are you doing?” Emma asked.

“Concentrating,” Regina replied, her voice short. “Or I would be if you weren’t so loud.”

“Mom,” Henry said quietly.

Regina huffed, and considering it was Henry who had spoken to her it was obvious to Emma that it wasn’t in regards to what had just been said but some kind of frustration.

“I need to access Emma’s magic,” Regina said. “I can’t do anything useful otherwise. I don’t have any other way of defending us if I don’t have magic and the stakes just got a whole lot higher.”

Emma frowned a little, sympathy growing in her. She couldn’t imagine what Regina felt going from being one of the most powerful magic-users in the town to utterly powerless. Truthfully, Emma couldn’t figure out why Regina couldn’t access the magic as easily. It wasn’t as if it was impossible to use. It was light magic, pure and simple. Emma had even managed to crack it, if only just a little bit, and she’d been terrible with it until Regina had started coaching her.

“I don’t think my magic can do fire balls,” Emma said.

“Well what _can_ it do?” Regina snapped. “You were perfectly able to light a fire in Neverland. Why can’t I start a fire with it now?”

“I don’t know but I’ve never made a fire ball,” Emma said. “I was able to levitate that time you tried to throw me into a ravine though. Maybe try something like that.”

“Pitch myself into a ravine, got it,” Regina said sarcastically.

“Can you chill for ten seconds?” Emma asked. “I’ve got a pounding headache that won’t go away.”

“I get one every day,” Regina said with a shrug. “You can live with it. What you can’t live with is an enormous snake killing everyone in town, but that’s what we’re going to have if I don’t figure out how to use your magic soon.”

“Just… just breathe, okay, Regina?” Emma said. “Let yourself breathe, call to it, and let the magic come to you. Mine doesn’t come rushing in and grab me every time I need it. I have to relax to get to it.”

Regina was silent, clearly thrown off by having an actual piece of advice given to her in that moment. She looked past her son to his other mother and stared for a moment as if expecting her to be grinning—to just be trying to throw her off somehow—before she looked ahead once more.

It occurred to Regina that Emma could have mentioned this previously, but it also occurred to her that Emma was being helpful now. She never really expected magical help from _Emma Swan_ , but the extenuating circumstances made it kind of a given that some strange things were going to happen.

She took a moment to do as Emma said and breathe, trying to figure out how exactly to call to the magic. She ended up closing her eyes again as she did so and so didn’t see when Emma and Henry traded glances of surprise that Regina had actually listened.

By the time they pulled up to the library, Regina was no closer to gaining any kind of control over Emma’s magic. She was only getting more and more frustrated if she was honest. The breathing wasn’t working and no matter how loudly she mentally “called” to Emma’s magic, nothing was showing up.

They got out of the car, Emma watching Regina carefully to see if she was going to be any kind of angry with her because of the trouble she was having. She knew it was unfair of her to assume Regina was going to lash out but it wasn’t as if Regina had a great track record with that.

A few moments later they were inside the library near the circulation desk, Snow and David rushing towards them to greet them. Snow opened her arms as she approached Emma but Emma stopped her with a hand up and shook her head. Snow stopped short, staring at her daughter in surprise, and Emma noticed Regina was staring at her as well, clearly shocked by what had just happened, but Emma put that aside.

“Where is he?” she asked.

“In the back,” David said, clearly as confused as anyone else by what had just happened. “He’s in the room furthest from the street but not near the elevator—we figured if the thing is underground it might find its way to the cavern Regina kept Maleficent in, so we didn’t want to put Hook in a room that it might burst into.”

“Good idea,” Emma said, moving on quickly before she could think too hard on it. She had to compartmentalize or she would freak out. “We can’t find a rooster because her Majesty over here hates birds and made it so there aren’t any chickens but the ones the basilisk already killed. We’ve got to use mirrors, so we’ve got to find a way to gather as many mirrors as possible. The only way I think this is going to happen is if we set up some kind of trap. We need to lure it into a place covered in mirrors so it’ll kill itself.”

“Gold’s got some,” Snow said.

“I have plenty,” Regina added, somewhat sheepishly.

“Snow and I can take the truck and pick up the ones from Gold and then look around for more,” David said. “Regina, if you want to go get as many as you can from your house, Emma can find a good place to set up a trap.”

Emma was surprised by David’s certainty that she would be able to find a place to put all of this. Why was she in charge? She didn’t know how to lure a basilisk anywhere. It seemed to just do what it liked.

Still, a small voice in her reminded her that she was the Savior, and it was her job.

“I’ll go with Regina to make sure she doesn’t have any trouble,” she said. “And Henry can come with us—but with the same rules.” She fixed her son with a look and he nodded. “Call me when you fill up your truck and I’ll have figured out a place to do this in.”

David and Snow nodded and started to leave. Snow made a move towards Emma, but Emma shook her head almost imperceptibly and her mother hurried out. Emma winced when she heard their truck fire up and roar down the street, but she shook her head and herself of that thought. Without a word she headed further into the library, finding the room her parents had left her boyfriend in.

The room was a tiny office, most likely for the librarian to utilize, and Killian was in the corner of it facing the wall. She saw he was awkwardly placed as if they’d thought about putting him behind a file cabinet but it seemed they’d lost their will to or had lost their nerve about stuffing him in so unceremoniously.

She moved closer to him and squeezed in so that she could examine him a little better. He looked the same and looked uninjured. He didn’t breathe, but she didn’t think that someone would be able to if they’d been frozen in place—or at least that was what she told herself to avoid thinking that he was suffering in any way. When she gently touched his hand she found it still warm, and his eyes didn’t look glazed over. She wondered if he was aware, like people said a coma patient was, or if his mind was as still as his body.

She heard a soft noise from the door and glanced over sharply.

“Might not be the best idea to look up so quickly when a basilisk is in town,” Regina said, but she didn’t sound angry or accusatory—or even sarcastic. It just sounded like a simple comment.

“I wasn’t using your body to do anything weird,” Emma said almost automatically.

“I know you weren’t,” she said. “You were just checking on him.” She glanced at the pirate, looking him over for a moment before looking back at Emma. “Like I said, I’m going to find a way to save him.”

“Even though you hate him?”

“Even though I hate him.”

“I guess even if you won’t change your mind about him then that’s something at least,” Emma said with a sigh. She looked back at her boyfriend.

“You didn’t let your mother hug you,” Regina said.

“What?”

“Your mother,” Regina repeated. “She tried to hug you—twice—and you didn’t let her.”

“You were very obviously angry when they hugged me earlier,” Emma said.

“How would you know?” Regina asked, a little defensively. “You were distracted.”

“I was upset but I wasn’t distracted,” Emma replied. “You clearly didn’t want her hugging your body so I wasn’t going to let her.”

“Oh… Thank you.”

“Of course.”

“Like I said, I’m going to fix this,” Regina said. “I’m going to make sure that once the basilisk is dead that anyone who’s petrified is back to normal, and that includes your boyfriend, loathsome as he is.”

“Thank you, I think,” Emma said.

“Let’s get a move on,” Regina said, ignoring the other woman’s comment for the time being. “Henry’s standing out there with his eyes closed and I’m pretty sure he’s going to start getting annoyed with me for making him do that all the time.”

“I’d rather him annoyed than dead.”

“Me, too,” Regina said grimly.

Emma cast one last glance at Killian, mentally promising him—and herself—that it would all be okay soon before she headed out to the front. With a plan in place, all she could do was get to work and hope for the best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've said it a few times in various forms but......... y'all, stop worrying about Hook. He will be dealt with, I promise.


End file.
